


One More Shot of Adrenaline

by lialibea



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Accident, Depressing, Derek Hale is Bad at Feelings, Emotionally Constipated Derek, Evil Kate Argent, Hospital, I'm Serious, I'm Sorry, M/M, Medical, Nurse Stiles, Nurse!Stiles, Parachute, Past Kate Argent/Derek Hale, References to Supernatural (TV), Sad, Stuntman - Freeform, alternative universe, fuck off Kate Argent, hospital au, this will be a sad one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-26 15:36:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 37,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3855931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lialibea/pseuds/lialibea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reckless stuntman Derek Hale meets the nurse Stiles Stilinski after a bad crash. And after that, life, love and lust happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Leave Me

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for clicking on this story! All the eleven chapters are finished and I'll try to post one chapter every day until it's all up. I hope you enjoy this work just as much as I do.

_So leave me in the cold_  
_Wait until the snow covers me up_  
_So I cannot move_

**-Daughter, Landfill**

  
They were rushing through the halls. The man whom Stiles had found was laying in the hospital bed with his left leg in a funny angle. There wasn't much blood but Stiles still felt sick to his stomach. He was fairly new to the job as a nurse but he'd never felt sick by merely seeing another patient, so this was a first.

Oddly enough the man didn't seem to be in pain. They had given him numerous shots of medication in the ambulance on their way to the hospital; both calming and soothing. Not once had the man moved and for a while Stiles had been convinced that he'd been dead. The staff on the ambulance had changed his mind after taking the man's pulse and listening to his breathing. Stiles had still been in chock after finding the man but rushing through a hospital kind of made it go away. He started to see clearer and clearer when they ran through the undergrounds of the hospital, some of the other nurses calmly stating things about the man. Blood pressure, heart rate, percentage of medication in the blood... It all flew right over Stiles' head.

They turned around a corner and finally got to the elevator. Stiles was over the top and when they stood in the elevator, waiting for the floors to pass, Mrs McCall, the head nurse, took his hand and looked him in the eye.

"It will all be okay, Stiles. You're handling this well. Just.. keep calm."

Stiles had just nodded with his eyes fixed on the man's face. There were small wounds of the face and on the side of his head there was a bigger scratch that the crew on the ambulance neatly had covered to stop the bleeding. Now, you could see blood coming through the band aid and once again, Stiles felt like puking. The blood was so very red. The colour made him sick and it felt as if something was bubbling under his skin.

"Beeeep."

The elevator doors opened and their crazy running started once again. This time the run wasn't as far, the room was only a few doors away. Mrs McCall ran ahead and opened the door.

"Incoming patient, doctor."

Doctor Deaton popped his head out. He looked concerned but got up and prepared himself.

"What's the state?"

"He is stable, for now, Deaton. He was found outside with a somewhat unreleased parachute on his back." Stiles thought for a second he could see Mrs McCall shooting him a glance but after a mere second there was nothing.

Stiles was tapping the floor with his foot and tried to calm himself down. He could hear his heart beat in his ears and his sight was blurry in the edges. If Deaton hadn't been there he was sure that he'd just talked nonstop but as of now he could just stand around, tap the floor and focus on not being sick.

"He got one, possibly two fractured bones in his left thigh. There are no signs of any big head trauma even if he still isn't conscious."

Deaton nodded.

"We should start hooking him up to some more drop and sedatives before we get going to the x-ray. Clear?"

"Yes, Deaton," Mrs McCall said and with the help of a few others she started strategically hooking the dark haired man up. Stiles took a few steps towards the patient with a strong desire to help, but got a glance from the head nurse to stay away. Stiles felt restless and tapped the floor faster. He just needed to get his nervous frustration out and tapping his foot seemed to do the trick. His heartrate was slowing down but his head still felt out of it.

A few minutes later, they were all gone. The bed had been pushed out of the room again and was currently making its way down to the x-ray. There, they would take as many pictures as they needed before actually doing something to help the poor man. The staff needed to know where the man needed the most help to be as sufficient as possible. If they acted now their actions could possibly hurt the patient even more.

Stiles stayed in doctor Deaton's room. Not because he wanted to, but because of Mrs McCall's harsh had told him to settle down.

Stiles didn't know what to do. Trying to actually sit down at one of the two chairs wasn't working; he just continued tapping his foot against the clinically clean and white floor. It wasn't comfortable and soon he was standing up again, with his hands franticly combing through his hair. What was he supposed to do? Maybe this man would die and it would all be Stiles fault for not acting on the spot. The thoughts were rushing through his brain and he felt his heartrate speeding up again.

He forced himself to relive the moment again and again and again, as he'd done the last hour.

Stiles had been out by the sea. He usually didn't walk along the sea, it reminded him too much of the past. But this day, he'd thought that it would've been nice.

Stiles cleared his throat, uncomfortable with his standing position. He sat down again and focused on not getting that full blown panic attack.

*****

_Waking up to his sixth birthday was awesome. He'd woken up very early and then he'd just lie in his bed, quiet as a mouse until his family had entered his room, singing the traditional 'Happy birthday'- . He tried to keep his eyes shut but it was hard not to peek. Soon, he opened his eyes and a big grin spread on his face. In front of him stood his mom, his dad and his older sister. In their hands they had presents that he knew was meant for him._

_He sat up in his bed._

_'Happy birthday, sweetie,' his mother said and sat down on his bed to kiss him on the head. It was hard being patient as a six year old but he kept his face straight until both his dad and his sister had wished him happy birthday._

_'Can I open them now?'  he said and looked upon his parents with a pleading ._

_'Of course, darling.'_

_He ripped up the first present, a yellow box with red dots. Inside it he found a teddy bear that he'd pointed at a few times when they had been to the toy store. The teddy bear was a wolf with grey fur and huge, blue eyes. It was perfectly furry and soft. He stroked the fur and looked at it with big eyes._

_'It's perfect,' he exclaimed happily._

_'Just as you, love.'_

*****

The waves had been angry with him and the wind had dragged his hair, whispering words into his ears. Stiles had sat down and just taken in the sight. It had been beautiful in its own way and he'd felt more calm than he'd done in a long time. He was all alone at the sea, nobody else wanted to go out in this horrendous weather, he'd thought to himself as he strolled down the small patch of sand.

He'd looked around and when he walked passed a tree, he'd seen something strange. At first, he'd thought that the man in front of him only was lying in the sand. Then, when he'd gotten closer Stiles had seen the blood. There wasn't a lot, he had seen worse, but in some way it had been worse than anything he'd ever seen. The whole scene felt awfully familiar and his calm day had stopped being calm. He'd just stood there and watched the man for about two seconds before he'd rushed to him. Stiles fell down on his knees. He made sure not to touch the man because he knew that if he touched this man the wrong way, he could hurt him.

'Hello, hello, sir, are you there?' For a second the two eyes had opened and Stiles had seen two light blue eyes full of panic stare back at him. Then they had closed and the man had just stayed still after that. He'd become a sack of potatoes, a ragdoll, a… possibly dead man.

Without taking his eyes of the face of the hurt man, Stiles had fumbled with his phone. The panic rushed to his head. The direct call to his personal work place had been answered nearly directly.

"This is nurse Stilinski. I'm by the sea and I found a man, he might be dead. Here's blood and, and…"

"Stiles, calm down. Exactly where are you?"

Stiles closed his eyes and touched his face, rubbed his eyes and let his hand comb through his hair.

"Ehm, I'm.. I'm at the sea near the watch tower, you know?"

"I'll send an ambulance right away. Stiles, stay with me now. Are there anything unusual about the man?"

Stiles had to open his eyes again and the sight struck him again. He felt sick to his stomach when making himself look a bit closer.

"He's fully clothed and got some sort of.. backpack on his back. Maybe a, maybe a parachute, maybe? I don't know."

His left leg laid in a funny angle. It looked as if the man had been about to sit down but then had fell down to the side.

"His left leg is in a weird angle, I'd say it's broken or out of its place." He took a few large, calming breathes. This was not a good time for a panic attack.

"Thank you, Stiles," the voice said. "Would you mind to just check his pulse before we move on?"

Stiles looked down on his shaking hand and swallowed hard. Slowly, he let his cold and slender fingers touch the other man's neck. Stiles thought that the man's neck was cold.

"There… There is a pulse."

The voice on the line seemed relieved.

"Now, you stay with me on the line until you can see the ambulance, okay?"

Stiles forgot himself and nodded before closing his eyes and letting his free hand rub small circles on his temples.

"Uhm.. yes. I will do that."

The rest was a blur. He couldn't really remember much of the conversation. Then the ambulance had come and they had quickly thrown both Stiles and the man into the car.

When Stiles had opened his eyes again, he simply couldn't look away from the stranger's face. The light blue eyes filled with pain were still stuck on his eyelids.

*****

 _He was flying. He was_ actually _flying. He felt like laughing like the worriless little child he was. He'd always wanted to fly and today his father had let him._

_People often told him that he looked a lot like his father. He could never see the resemblance himself and personally wise he was closer to his mother._

_His mother always wanted to try new and exciting things. But this time, it was his dad that had let him fly. And wasn't it the most fun he'd had in ages?_

_The rollercoaster turned again and he screamed. His older sister was sitting next to him and didn't look as excited as he was._

_'It's not_ that _exciting,' she said, trying to sound way cooler than she was but when she'd looked at him there had grown a fond smile on her lips. He'd answered with a smile but the next turn had interrupted him._

_'IIIIIIIIHHHH!'_

_They got off the rollercoaster way too soon and went back to their dad._

_'Did you like it?' Dad's eyes were glowing in the sun._

_'I loved it!' He laughed and his sister smiled next to him._

_'It was great even if my brother is kind of a little baby.'_

_'No I'm not! I'm actually eight years old!'_

_'Yes and I'm eleven,' she said and stuck out her tongue._

_'You're so stupid,' he said._

_'You too.'_

_'But I love you both,' their dad said and hugged them._

*****

Stiles sat still with closed eyes until he felt someone tap his shoulder. He looked up only to see the head nurse with a gentle look on her face.

"Stiles, you should get something to eat or drink."

Stiles just shook his head.

"How is he? Why aren't you with him?"

Mrs McCall looked at him for a second.

"He is currently in x-ray. We're fairly positive there aren't any major life threatening injuries there."

Stiles nodded and let his fingers massage his temples. His head was hurting.

"Stiles, now, will you please let me help you to get something to eat and drink? You look like you need it."

Stiles was so tired that he just blindly agreed. He felt pathetic when being dragged out of the room and into the small staff area where a coffee machine and a fridge stood. Mrs McCall sat him down in one of the chairs and after a few minutes she was back with a cup of strong coffee and a sandwich.

"You're way too kind to me," he said without looking into her eyes.

"You're the one who's worried to madness over a stranger you found."

"Yeah, but that only makes me bad at my job. I couldn't even help him." Stiles stared down the coffee mug. It smelled bitter.

"Stiles, look at me."

He lifted his head.

"You're a great nurse. Most people in your shoes would react the same way. You weren't prepared to see a man who you thought was dead. He will most likely recover only because of you, don't forget that."

Stiles just nodded.

"I just.. I can see his eyes every time I close mine. They were filled with panic, pain and..." He looked down again and this time he took a sip of the coffee. It was bitter.

Mrs McCall touched his shoulder gently and rubbed it for a few moments.

"I need to get back now. Please, eat up, Stiles. Then, I suggest that you go home and rest."

"I couldn't possibly relax at home. I'm just going to... Stay here."

She stopped on the threshold.

"Well, be stubborn then."

She left the room and Stiles sat in his chair and looked at his sandwich. It didn't look very appetizing and biting into it he realised it tasted like nothing.

Stiles felt sick to his stomach once again. Only this time was special because now he actually had to run for the toilet because he got sick. Sitting with fluids dripping down from his mouth and a pit in his stomach, he cried. This day was one of the worst in his life.

*****

_His mom really loved wolves. Maybe it was the fact that she worked with them in the park near their home every day that had created her love for the animals. When he had been smaller he'd always thought of his mom like a strong wolf, an alpha leader. She had taught him that word, he remembered with a smile on his lips. The ten year old him sat on his bed on a school night with a thick book in his lap. The book had been an assigned but now he read it for fun. To be honest he loved every second of it. He thought of the main character as himself and together with his wolf they fought off danger._

_He didn't know what time it was but when his mom entered the room he looked up from his book and looked at the clock._

_'Darling, it's the middle of the night. You should really go to sleep.'_

_He just nodded and laid the book beside his bed._

_'Is it a good book?' his mother asked and stroked his hair._

_He nodded once again while realising how terribly tired he was._

_'Now sleep, sweet heart.' She kissed his head before leaving the room and turning off the lights._

_He fell asleep quickly that night._

*****

"Stiles." Somebody shook his body. Stiles opened his eyes and for a second he didn't know where he was or why he was there. When he saw doctor Deaton's face everything came back and suddenly he felt very awake.

"How is he?" Stiles asked and rubbed his eyes. _'Please don't be dead_ **,'** he thought to himself. The silent words had become his very own prayer the last hour. He still didn't know why he felt so invested in the well being of this man he did not know.

"He is stabilized for now."

Relief washed over his body and he felt his tense muscles calming down.

"What are his injuries?"

"He got a thigh fracture as expected and only a sprained ankle thanks to his protective shoes. I have no idea how he only got away with a concussion when sky diving, that we have to talk with him about."  
"No other head injuries?"  
"Not that are visible to us right now."  
Stiles nodded. He felt better after hearing Deaton's words.

"Thank you so much, Deaton."

"No, thanks to _you_ , it was you who saved him."

Deaton turned around to leave the room.

"Wait, Deaton! What's his name?"

Deaton turned around and looked at him for a while.

"We do not yet know. Nobody has yet reported him as missing."

With that, Deaton hurried out of the room and left Stiles wondering. Who was this man, whom had not been reported missing?

Stiles felt bad for the man and decided to at least go look at him before going home to actually sleep.

The structure of the hospital wasn't very hard to understand. It had only taken Stiles a couple of days before he knew where every room was situated and what was the best way to get to it. That's why he quickly made his way the mystery stranger he'd saved. The dark haired man was in a room without any windows and with a nurse by his side that sat watching over him. She would sit there until the doctors were convinced that the man wouldn't randomly die.

The steady heart beat could be heard throughout the whole room and it had a soothing effect on Stiles. He nodded to the nurse by the man's bed in acknowledgement and went on to take a closer look at the patient.

The left leg was lifted up from the bed in an uncomfortable position due to his fracture. Stiles moved closer to see better. The man's black hair was clean now, no blood on it that revealed the accident. Around his head he now had a smaller wrap that hid the scratch on the side of his head. Stiles couldn't fight the urge to touch that feather-like hair. It was soft. His fingers quickly jumped back after feeling the smooth hair. His eyes went on to the face.

The stranger's eyes were firmly shut but Stiles could still see those blue eyes, filled with pain. A shiver went through his body when he saw the small wounds on the man's face that stood in such contrast to his fair skin and his dark stubble on the chins. Stiles couldn't help but notice how good looking the man was.

He shook of the thoughts and nodded to the nurse before leaving. The blue eyes were still haunting him.


	2. Weak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everyone who is reading this story! I'm so very excited about posting it :)

_My body's weak,_  
_Feel my lungs giving up on me_  
_I'm worried it might just be_  
_Something my soul needs_

**-Keaton Henson, Flesh and Bone**

 

_He'd met her two months ago, right after his family had moved out from New York to a big house on the outskirts of a smaller town. Even if he missed New York with all its' buildings, people and things to do, having her was far better than what he'd had in New York._

_She was a bit older than him, but so very beautiful. She'd said that she loved him and that was why he couldn't tell his parents about it; they didn't like her family for some odd reason that he'd never understood. That was why they'd kept their love from everyone and he wasn't one to show and tell. He was perfectly fine with keeping her to himself, it was romantic and he was head over heels in love with her. Some nights he could just lay awake and think about her._ Kate _. She had a beautiful name, a beautiful face, a beautiful mind._

_This night they were going to meet each other in an abandoned barn, just a few miles from his home. As he saw her appearing in the threshold, his heart stopped and he rushed towards her. A few minutes later, when they both stood against a wall, panting, he whispered that he loved her. She laughed and it was a happy laugh in his ears._

_'Of course you do,' she teased him._

*****

"So, I was told your name is Derek Hale." Stiles watched the stranger that had been left in his room, stabilised after a surgery in the thigh. A fractured femur bone was usually treated with surgery and time to rest and this case was no special.

The man was still lying in the exact position that Stiles had left him the previous night. Stiles fought the urge to touch the man's face because wouldn't it be terribly strange if he did?

Unlike the previous night, he was alone with the patient because a few hours after the surgery the man had been considered stable. Stiles stared at the fair skin and the small wounds.

"So, Derek, nobody was looking for you. That's rather depressing, isn't it? I guess you're a sad person. They told me you had no family in the picture. The fact that nobody-"

The door to the room opened and Stiles shut his mouth because he did not want to be found talking to the dead-to-the-world man in front of him.

"Stiles! I thought I'd find you here. Were you talking to Mr Derek Hale?" Mrs McCall smiled and Stiles felt embarrassed.

"Yeah, I was just asking him how it felt to fly. He's not responding, though. Why is that?" The head nurse shook her head, clearly a bit annoyed but also relieved by his inability to stay serious. Because if Stiles was making jokes he was kind of okay.

"I see you're back to normal."

"A little bit of chock never hurt anyone."

"Yes? Then I guess you'll work today?"

Stiles had thought about taking the day off but just sitting alone in his empty and cold apartment wasn't very appealing.

"No, I just dressed like this because I think it's stylish." He pointed to his blue working clothing.

"I see..." She said and hid a smile very badly.

"You can come down when you're ready, there aren't very much to do right now but we'll be stressing soon enough." With that, she walked out of the room again and left Stiles with the steady beat of Derek's heart filling the room. It felt oddly personal to call the injured man "Derek" in his head but still he did because it felt even stranger to refer to him as "the man". That just sounded like he was a bad gangster.

Being left alone again Stiles hesitated before speaking into the empty room.

"So.... Derek... Guess I'll see you later. Don't run away."

Stiles left the room after having given the ma- Derek another long .

*****

_It was hard work being a teenager. Derek knew that and tried not to think too hard about things, not to overanalyze the looks he got from his parents when they asked about his love life and not to cry out of anger when he fought with his older sister. Yes, it definitely was hard work being a teenager, at least in the Hale-home._

_Derek lay down in his bed and tried to sleep. It was autumn and outside his window there were lots and lots of yellow, orange and brown leaves._

"So, I was told your name is Derek Hale," _a voice said. Derek looked around in the room, frightened by the voice. His surroundings suddenly became unclear and started to fade. His room turned to coal and suddenly he fell. He was in the air, flying high and wide. The voice started to talk again but Derek lost the first few sentences, he was far too scared._

"…They told me you had no family in the picture." _Derek hissed at the voice that now sounded sad and the words felt horribly familiar. His stomach turned upside down and he felt sick. He was still falling through the air in what seemed to be a never-ending void._

_Another voice came but Derek couldn't hear what they said. He desperately wanted to open his eyes but they were already open. Was he dreaming?_

"So.... Derek... Guess I'll see you later. Don't run away."

_The voice made him weak and frightened. Where was he? He was simply a fifteen year old boy that lived with his parents and his sister in a small town. What was happening?_

_Suddenly everything went black._

******

Stiles went on to visit the man later in the day. He found the presence of the sleeping man to be oddly calming. He told Derek that everything was under control and that he didn't need to worry. He mostly said those words to himself but it didn't feel as stupid when he pretended to talk to someone else than himself. The whole I-talk-to-myself was a person other people tended to stay away from and he guessed the I-talk-to-somebody-that-can't-hear-me person was a bit more likeable.

He sat by the bed and the dark haired man. Stiles wondered why nobody missed him. Didn't he have any friends?

Stiles suddenly got a devious idea and took up his phone. With shaking fingers he opened the facebook app and searched for "Derek Hale New York". Ten different looking people showed up as search result but Stiles knew exactly who he was looking for. The picture of Derek was a good one and Stiles had to admit that his sleepy friend was rather attractive. But the picture didn't look real and the smile looked forced and tense. His banner picture was a bad ass picture of Derek himself skydiving, arms out and hair up.

Stiles scrolled down the page to see if anyone had written anything on his wall. He saw five posts and he felt his heart clench. The man in front of him must've been a sad one. Out of 500 friends only four had showed him some love.

"Derek, ignore Erica, we just misses you. Please call me," he read out loud. Signed from an Isaac Lahey.

"Texas misses your stunts ;)))"

"Please come back to skydive soon. The next round is on me, mate."

"Derek, for real, you dick. I know you need some "time off" but please just call us. WE MISS YOU." Stiles smiled at the fourth one, signed from a user called Erica Reyes.

But the dates on said posts didn't suggest that the people knew about Derek's fall. They were all dated back two weeks.

So they didn't know that he'd fallen? That would've explained a lot.

Something still tugged in his chest when he put away the phone. What had happened to this man? Stiles was intrigued and felt bad for the poor fellow. No family and hardly any friends.

Stiles' fingers reached out and touched Derek's hair. It was as smooth as ever.

"So, Derek. You free tomorrow? Good, I'll just pop by then!"

Hurrying towards the door, Stiles was ready to leave any second. But he turned in the doorway and hesitated for a second.

"Today we lost a baby. She didn't even have a name yet."

Then Stiles left for the day, feeling a little bit more relieved than before.

*****

_The voice had seemed sad. Derek couldn't hear the words but he heard the sadness and the forced laugh. He kind of wished that he'd heard what it had been saying, but he'd been flying. And to fly was a wonderful feeling, he didn't feel anything at all. Nothing around him mattered anymore and it was just him, the wind, the sky and the ground that hurried towards him. Even if he always could feel something missing it didn't matter when he flied.  
Suddenly the ground was way too close and Derek crash-landed._

_When he woke up again he was in his bed once again. He breathed out, it had all been one weird dream. He wondered if he'd only awoken because of the dream. Tired, he rose from the bed; he was thirsty. Derek hurried down the stairs and walked to the kitchen. On the wall a big clock was ticking and showing him the time. Six o'clock. It was a Saturday morning and he felt well rested. He stretched after drinking that glass of water and then he looked at the clock once again. Derek decided to put on his shoes and some workout clothes. He felt like running._

_He really liked the way the blood pumped through his veins when he ran and he liked the looks Kate gave him when he told her about his runs. He took a long trail in the woods and was away for more than one hour. The music in his ears screamed of unforgettable love and heartbreak but he felt light and happy. When he took a turn and ran on the road up to his house he noticed that something had changed. There was a different smell in the air and people stood on the road. They stared at him. He tried to ignore them and just continued running up the road to where his house stood._

_Then he stopped. There was something red and yellow that licked his house. Suddenly, he felt warm and then cold at the same time._

_'Derek!' He heard someone call out his name but didn't care. One hour ago his house had been whole and now it was broken. He looked around. Where were his parents?_

_Then everything happened so very quickly. A fire truck came and firemen ran around on his house. Derek kept screaming at the workers; where were his parents? Why didn't they save them?_

_Nobody answered him and soon he sat on the ground and stared out in the air. If his parents were dead, did that make him an orphan?_

*****

Stiles threw himself on the bed. There wasn't any other furniture to really "throw" himself on so his bed was used to it. The empty walls stood tall around him even when he closed his eyes to shut them out. The apartment had been his for over a year now and still he hadn't put any effort into making it into a home. His father and Scott had been bugging him about it but when nobody ever visited him he didn't really feel the need to have it looking cosy. Either way, it wasn't like he ever spent time in there. Work always ate up all his time and he liked it that way. Not that being a nurse was the most glamorous work but it kept him busy. He'd chosen the education because it was a short one and he knew that if he one day wanted to do further studies he had a good background in the hospital world. One day, he wanted to become a doctor but that day seemed to be far away from present time. All his money went to paying rent and to pay off his student-loans. Stiles nearly fell asleep on the bed but was woken up by his phone.

Still tired, he fumbled with his phone and checked the caller ID.

"Hey, dad," he said into the phone.

"Hello, Stiles." His father said with a caring voice. It had been a few days since they'd talked on the phone last time.

"Is this a bad time?"  
"No, no, no, I'm awake! Up and shining!" He fell silent for a second and rubbed his eyes before being able to actually continue the conversation.

"Work just… you know, it's kind of tiring." He heard how tired and serious his voice sounded and wondered when he'd become _boring_.

Stiles could nearly see his dad nod and the thought was reassuring.

"Well, I'm tired too."  
"What has been happening lately?"  
Then Stiles found himself telling the whole story of the mystery Derek Hale to his father. After having wished each other to sleep well they hang up and Stiles went on to brushing his teeth. He felt like a zombie, more dead than alive.

His clothes fell quickly to the floor and then Stiles lay in his bed, changing sides to find the most comfortable position.

*****

_The next thing Derek knew he was sixteen again. He was currently living in some resident for 'orphan teenagers' and he desperately wanted out of there. The thoughts about his burnt down house and Kate never ended. Every night he had nightmares, and they never stopped. Some nights when he was dreaming he could see the fire starting. He got to follow Kate around the property, see her checking the windows to his parents bedroom and then he saw her light the match. He always woke up in a pool of sweat, shaking and crying._

_The staff didn't like him either and he wished he still had his mom there. Everything had gone downhill for Derek. After the fire his friends had grown scared to talk to him, scared of a possible break and now he'd pushed them away. He didn't like when they were around, he didn't like to feel as the elephant in the room._

_The orphanage sent him to therapy but he never said anything about the fire or Kate. He wanted to, but he couldn't. The words didn't want to see the light of day and every time he tried to open his mouth his breath hitched and he panicked. If he told the therapist, they would also blame him. Blame him for trusting Kate._

_So instead of talking to people Derek was mostly outside. He ran a few miles every week, mostly evening and night runs when it was so dark outside that he had to rely on his shitty headlamp. The dark forest gave him a certain peace and when his senses told him about the dangers of the night he thrived in it. The danger gave him kicks that he soon learned to love._

*****

"Derek! My man!" Stiles said loud enough for the man to hear it. If he could hear, that was. Stiles went to the bedside and looked at him as usual.

"Derek, we really need to talk about this. " Stiles shifted his weight awkwardly. "The staff don't know why you're still out. You should be here and alive but still you're not. Or, I mean, you are alive but you're most certainly not _here_."

Stiles kept his fingers to himself this time and sat down on the chair next to the bed.

"Or maybe you are. I don't know."

"If you hear this you must think I'm rather rude. So, without further ado, here's Stiles: the incomplete presentation."

Stiles folded his hands under his chin and made himself comfortable while intensely looking at the man.

"I am a twenty two year old human of the male gender who tend to live in his own little fantasy world where everything can be made into sarcasm. My name is a long and tedious polish name that you wouldn't be able to pronounce so instead everyone calls me Stiles. Stiles Stilinski is therefore my full name which, I know, it sounds horrible but it's actually not that terrible. Kind of unique, actually."

He swallowed.

"I'm a nurse if you couldn't figure that one out. I actually wished to be a doctor but since I just wanted to work already I just went for something easier but I'm ready to do some further studies in the near future. It's actually really cool to be a nurse and everyone here is super nice, especially Mrs McCall. I think she sees herself as my mentor and guide and that's just great. She kind of reminds me of…" His voice died.

"My mother."

It felt good that he was the only one hearing this conversation.

"Yeah, my mother's dead. I know, I just threw that one out there. Kind of a conversation killer, isn't it? Yeah, you just fell _really_ silent. Sorry to make it so awkward, Derek."

It took a while for Stiles to keep going.

"So, ehh, yes, I've lived alone with my dad since you know.. My mum died. My dad is a sheriff in a small town a bit from here. I moved to New York after graduating, the small town felt too small for me. I just, I wish for something bigger, something grander. Do you do that too?"

Stiles cleared his throat once again and realised that he was talking to a man that would never respond. He also realised that his monologue had become more serious than he'd intended.

"This is a very one-sided relationship, Derek."

Stiles looked at the man who was supposed to wake up. Why was he telling this to the thin air?

He then stood up quickly.

"Sorry to interrupt you, Derek. I'll leave you now to let you do whatever you were doing before I entered the room. Don't do anything nasty or I'll think the other nurses will notice. See you."

And then he was out of the room, ready for yet another day of calling names and saving people from themselves.

*****

_The voice had interrupted his reality once again. This time, The voice had been sounding a lot more happy and cheery. The feeling of flying had gripped him once The voice started talking._

_The voice talked a lot. Sometimes it was sad, sometimes happy and sometimes it was thinking. The voice told Derek about itself, told him its name was 'Stiles Stilinski', which Derek thought was a stupid name. Stiles then said that he was a nurse and Derek couldn't figure out how Stiles wanted him to know that he was a nurse. Where was Derek? He didn't know._

_Before Derek had the time to overanalyse the voice went on telling him that his mum had died. Derek felt for the voice when it grew silent and seemed to want to swallow its own words._

_He knew how it hurt and the pain hit him in his stomach, or what seemed to be his stomach either way. The pain of losing family never went away, he knew that. Derek knew that all too well._

_Stiles cleared his throat. It was an annoying sound._

"This is a very one-sided relationship, Derek."

_If Derek could have answered he simply would have agreed because that was what he was like even he really appreciated that the voice was talking to him. It felt like it was ages since he'd last had anyone actually speak to him. When Derek heard a door shut he blinked and when he opened his eyes he was the one shutting the door to his house that had burnt down. Once again he was running away from it but this time he knew what would happen but he couldn't stop it. Yet again, history was repeating itself in his head._

*****

"Stiles!" He heard a patient call for him. It was poor Mrs Johnson, an 85 year old woman that was starting to lose all of her memories. Two weeks ago she'd fractured her leg and this day was one of her regular check-ups. The elderly woman was always very confused and some days she didn't even remember her name even if she sometimes could tell the staff stories of her youth. She had grown very fond of Stiles for some reason and he always took care of her whenever she had an appointment.

So today he walked up to her when she called and she pulled him into a shaky hug with her fragile arms. Her whole body seemed frail and porcelain-like. As always Stiles was very afraid of accidently pushing or hugging too hard so that she would be hurt. Not that he was that incredibly strong, in fact, Mrs Johnson was probably a lot stronger than him actually.

"God day, Mrs Johnson," he greeted her politely and smiled at her wrinkly face.

"Will you show me to my doctor, young man."

"Everything for you, love," he said and held out his arm for her to take. He then helped her up a pair of stairs and into the office of Doctor Valack, one of the more... special doctors at the hospital. Doctor Valack still creeped Stiles out sometimes because the doctor always seemed to see everything. A joke about having a third eye had also been told way too many times by the doctor himself to a point that was slightly creepy.

Stiles wondered if the doctor actually had tattooed a third eye somewhere on his body. That was totally something Valack would do.

The fatigue was starting to creep up on Stiles and he looked at the clock on the wall in the waiting room while calling for the next patient. He would be off in one hour.

Plans of seeing his favourite sleepy man was already set in his head and he realised that he may be one of the creepy persons in the hospital. Well, doctor Valack would always be creeper number one but Stiles was a close second.

*****

_This was his first time skydiving. In his younger days he'd been terrified of heights, he still was and that was the simple reason as to why he was jumping out of a plane with only a parachute on his back. The night runs had stopped giving him kicks even if he went on doing them and now he sought the opportunity to get a greater rush of adrenaline._

_Derek Hale wasn't afraid of much but standing in the doorway of the plane nearly scared the shit out of him. Literally._

_'ONE, TWO, THREE!' The man in front of him screamed and then he jumped. Derek's heart was beating at an incredibly fast speed._

_He took his place and counted down in his head. Derek closed his eyes and jumped. Suddenly he was falling and flying at the same time. The rush was making its way into his head and he loved every second of terrified horror._

*****

Sitting in the usual chair by the bed of a certain patient really made him calm. The whole thing was strange but he couldn't break his habit now.

He'd just told Derek about his horrible gut feeling, like something actually was about to happen.

"Do you ever feel like something is about to happen? Do you ever get that feeling inside of your stomach that tells you to look out for something?"

Stiles nearly reached out for Derek's smooth hair again.

"I don't know why I'm telling you this. Seriously, I'm spending all my energy and humour on some guy that probably doesn't hear this. You're a lucky man, Derek Hale."

*****

_At this point Derek couldn't count the times that he'd been skydiving. The company that ran the service no longer charged him anything if he gave lessons two times a week, which he hesitantly did. He didn't really need the money but it felt good to do something with his time other than just glaring angrily at people when he didn't work._

_Either way, he could no longer count how many times he'd done it and that meant that the rush wasn't as intense anymore. He sought new ways to keep his adrenaline coming and today was the day he'd trained for. He'd looked up videos, tutorials, books... Everything on the matter._

_The parachute was supposed to be released in the last possible second._

"You're a lucky man, Derek Hale."

*****

Suddenly the heart monitor started to go crazy. At first, Stiles didn't hear a difference but soon it was beeping like crazy. Sweat was running down Derek's face and some muscles around his eyes started twitching.

Stiles heart started beating faster when he got up to press the 'Help needed' button if somebody hadn't noticed the way too high levels of heart beating.

"Derek, you're safe."

*****

_The wind caught a bit of his hair and toyed around with it. Today he fell very fast, faster than he'd ever done and his heart was speeding, racing against itself. After only a few minutes he could see the ground very close and if this had been an usual round he'd released his parachute by now, but he didn't. Instead he moved himself into a position that wouldn't make him break._

'Derek, you're safe.' _Stiles said and Derek ignored the voice._

_Derek knew that he was supposed to release the parachute by now and he pulled the tiny piece of string that was attached to the backpack-looking parachute on his back. He felt the parachute come out from it but somewhere something went horribly wrong and his heart started beating so fast, so fast. Adrenaline ran through his veins and he both felt more alive and more dead than he'd ever felt._

"Derek, can you hear me? Derek, you'll be okay."

_A physical pain stronger than any physical pain he'd ever felt caught him and he screamed._

*****

Staff were surrounding Derek. Stiles stood in the circle of professionals trying to get into contact with panicked the man. The whole experience was made even more terrifying with the heart monitor now speeding. When he thought it couldn't get any faster it turned into a dark scream. It took half a second for Stiles to realise that it wasn't the monitor that screamed but Derek.

The blue eyes filled pain was open again and stared out into thin air that seemed to be vibrating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully you all like it so far! The first chapters are a big vague, but I promise that they'll get better and better ;)  
> Feel very welcome to leave me a comment!


	3. I Am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story is about to become better now ;) This chapter also feels very real for me since I happened to spend the day at the hospital after having fallen off my horse. Thankfully, I'm fine.

_And I guess I wanted  
I just want you to know_

_All of these things make me who I am  
Maybe, All of these things make me who I am_

**-AWOLNATION, I Am**

 

******

Machines were beeping, nurses and doctors talking to each other in medical terms and Stiles wanted nothing more than to help. This time he really tried to help and when somebody handed him two bags; one of morphine and one of sedatives, he quickly placed them into the IV stand before connecting them to Derek's bloodstream. His hand knew the drill and the work calmed him down.

While Derek's heart started to calm down his eyes started to wander around even more deliriously. Stiles wanted to capture Derek's eyes and hold them while telling him that everything would be okay, like he'd done before the room was filled with people.  
Derek's breath hitched up again and the heart monitor was rushing again.  
"Derek, Derek, Derek!" He heard himself say, no longer able to keep his mouth shut.

"Calm down," he said, trying his best to sound as reassuring as he could to get the panicked man to relax.

"It will aaaaall be okay."  
When he said that Derek's eyes found his and for a second their eyes locked and Derek focused and tried to get his lungs to calm the fuck down. Stiles whole body tensed upon meeting the patient's eyes. They were as blue as he remembered them to be but he was not prepared for the pain they held on to. He felt a tingle in his body when Derek's breath started slowing down again and his eyes hid the pain.

Stiles had recognised his hitched breath; that was a panic attack about to come. Panic attacks were something Stiles was awfully familiar with and waking up to one was very unpleasant.

Then Derek broke the eye contact and his heart beat grew steadier. Around him people started to check his new blood rates and so on, so on. Somebody caught his eyes and gave him a thankful nod.

Stiles heard a dark and husky voice trying to clear its throat.

"Wh- where am I?" Derek said. He seemed tired, scared and to be in a lot of pain. Stiles could hear that Derek didn't want the fear to shine through, but it did and Stiles understood him.

*****

This was not like waking up from any other nightmare. This was like waking up from the worst nightmare he'd ever had and then realising it was all true. Usually, his memories of his life was concealed but waking up from reliving it all... It'd cleared the memories and brought them all up to the surface.

"Wh- where am I?" His voice barely made it through the sentence and broke halfway through it. He'd heard The Voice called Stiles a while ago, telling him to calm down and strangely enough he'd accomplished that. He was still trying to catch his breath with a head that seemed to be bombed but he could at least focus.

Now he was staring at a group of people, all bending over him in a strongly lit white room.

"Derek, you're currently at the hospital," an unfamiliar voice said and Derek's eyes searched for the speaker. He found it to be a short and bald man.

Derek's body felt awfully heavy, warm and sweaty while his head was pounding. A thick haze was coming over him and he let his head sink back into the pillow that was below his head. The world was spinning and for a second he felt like laughing. For some unknown reason he held the laugh back and just let his tense body relax.

A lightning with pain struck him when he lay down and his mind got rid of the haze. He must've tried moving into a more comfortable position because when he looked up he saw that his leg was lifted and held up. It didn't good at all and for a second he forgot about the dreams and memories. Was he ever going to heal enough to keep going on with his life? How was he supposed to keep on fighting, keep on being him without his leg? He tried to remember what happened and then another lightning struck him. The skydiving, the parachute, the dreams, The Voice…

His head jerked up again and now his mind felt a lot calmer. No more of that crazy staring.

"Is this because of the parachute?" Derek said and this time his voice didn't break even if he felt like crying. His mind was a mess of thoughts, all screaming about how he wouldn't be able to make it.

"That is correct, Derek." Why was that man using his name so often? Derek didn't like it, he didn't like the short man.

"Who are you?" He barked out, annoyed with the pain that was slowly going away as a thick cloud of languid feelings went over him. But, he was pleased with his voice that no longer broke.

"I am Doctor Deaton and this is my small staff of three; Mrs McCall, Jennifer and Stiles."

Derek's eyes got stuck on Stiles. That must've been The Voice that had been talking to him during his… off-time. The other man looked youthful but tired with brown hair that looked messy and soft. Stiles looked as surprised as Derek felt.

"For how long have I been out?" He asked and forced his eyes to look away from Stiles. Instead he shut them, hoping that it would make the burn go away. But shutting them only made him see the coal that his room had been made of in one of the dreams.

"Four days," the annoying doctor responded.

Derek wanted to say something back but then the haze hit him again and he felt so tired.

"So, he's up and alive!" somebody said.

"How long will it be until he'll be… conscious for a longer period of time?" The Voice asked.

"It depends; maybe a few hours or a few days, depending on his head and mind." Then Derek drifted off to a deep and dreamless sleep.

*****

Deaton had said that it would probably take a few days for Derek to become more awake but the patient must've been something extraordinary because five hours after having awoken in a panic attack Derek was awake again. He seemed angry and grumpy with the staff around him when Stiles opened the room. Stiles, whom only had slept for four hours after having crashed in one of the beds the hospital that was provided for the staff if they was too tired to actually go home.

During the previous week the daily check-up had become part of his routine and even if he was so tired that he was basically sleepwalking he'd woken up to take his earlier shift, mostly so that he could check on his sleepy friend. He was intrigued by Sleeping Beauty.

Derek seemed to calm down when Stiles entered the room.

"Good morning," Stiles said and his fellow nurses greeted him.

Derek looked at him and Stiles felt something sneak around in him when he met those horribly blue eyes. Instead he turned his eyes towards the white walls.

"It's not morning," Derek remarked and Stiles turned his gaze back to Derek's.

"Then you clearly haven't been in a hospital long enough. Here everything is morning and everything is night."

Derek shook his head but only seemed to remember afterwards how sore his head was. The man had a freaking concussion! The motion therefore stopped halfway through and left Derek with closed eyes. A small noise escaped his mouth and Stiles couldn't help but feel bad for him.

"A lot of pain?"

"I can handle it."

"Doesn't look like it."

"But I can," Derek barked grumpily. Stiles had forgotten about the two other nurses standing in the room and he shot them an apologetic look. He understood Derek though, he would've been super grumpy if he'd fallen out of a plane and woken up in a hospital.

"Sure, superman." Stiles threw his hands in the air and noticed too late what his 'superman' implied. Either Derek didn't mind being called superman or he didn't understand.

The room felt silent while Stiles sat down in his chair and yawned.

"So, I am Stiles," he said to Derek.

"Stiles as in 'I am super styli-'"

"I know," Derek interrupted and shot him a look.

"You know I'm stylish after having seen my work clothes?" To avoid the blue eyes Stiles shot a look towards his blue working outfit. Not very stylish, actually.

"No, not that." Derek said and seemed to hesitate for a second.

"I meant... I know your name is Stiles, since you're The Voice."

"Are you sure you aren't in a lot of pain and just babbling?" Derek had hit his head pretty badly. Like, very badly.

The dark haired man sighed.

"No, you're The Voice as in the voice I heard while I was… out."

Oh shit, he'd really heard all that crap?

"Oh. Well. Now you know a whole lot about me and I guess you'll have to tell me everything about you later."

Derek seemed a bit flustered by now and that confused the tired brain of Stiles'.

The room fell into silence again.

"Well, ladies, men. Derek. I really need to get going. Have a good day!" With that he left the room only to stop out side of the door and let his smile fade. He was so tired that he didn't know what to do with himself.

*****

Derek was laying in his bed. What else was he supposed to do? The stupid doctor Deaton wouldn't let him move even if you were supposed to move a day after surgery. Sure, if he was allowed to move he probably wouldn't be able to either way, his head was pounding and he felt sick to his stomach, but he would've liked for them to at least ask him if he wanted to try to walk. A wave of sickness attacked him and he wondered what it would've been like without the medications that left his mind a bit fuzzy and his body feeling funny. The pain probably would've been a lot worse and he sent a silent thank you to whoever had invented morphine.

The boring room left him alone with his thoughts. The staff had told him to sleep but he knew that he would fall asleep soon enough when the medication kicked in and that he could overthink now. Derek thought about a lot of things; why he'd relived his whole life, why he'd heard The Voice during his dreams. He wondered why the parachute hadn't released properly and during a dangerous second he'd let himself think the _'what if I would've died'_ thought. The last hour he'd been rethinking that thought a thousand times and he had only come up with one single answer. It would have been a lot better than now.

After the fire he'd thought about dying a lot but even if he'd thought about suicide he'd never done it. Simply because he didn't want Kate to be the reason all his family died. No, he didn't want her to have that pleasure, he wanted her to suffer, just as he did. Every day.

When thinking about death, he always knew how mad and depressed he sounded. But who would _actually_ miss him? Nobody. Or... Maybe Erica, Isaac, Boyd, a few of his other skydiving-buddies and his agent but they would all move on quickly and then just forget about him. _'Ah, Derek Hale,'_ they would say when somebody asked about him, _'poor man. At least he died happy, doing what he loved. Other than that, I always thought of him as a rich bastard._ ' His agent would've added that ' _not a pleasure to work with either._ '

For so many years Derek had tried to go back to his old self; the fifteen year old boy who had a family but he couldn't. He simply had forgotten how to be happy and it was only when somebody lured him to smile that he remembered that he was able to perform such intense face-workouts. Whenever he truly smiled, he felt guilty. He hated to feel like a miserable heartbroken teen, but it was the honest truth that somehow was breaking through when he felt so groggy.

"Derek, we're leaving you alone now. Do you want something else?" Derek didn't like the way-too-sweet-voice of the nurse that called herself Jennifer.

"I'm fine," he said.

"Then try to get some sleep," somebody said.

The nurse then nodded and left the room, leaving him alone with his thoughts again.

*****

Stiles was literally about to crumble and break in any second now. He was scared of saying something too sarcastic and annoyed to one of the patients and risk to scare them off and potentially lose his job. His lack of sleep had caused some of the other nurses to ask him if he really should stay. Why did everyone wanted him out of there? Stiles' eye twitched and he rubbed it nervously, moving his eyes to the clock on the wall.

He got off in ten minutes. This shift was over soon, it was his shortest shift during the week only because of the short break in between this and his previous shift. Stiles felt restless due to all the coffee he'd drowned himself in the last hour or so. He wondered if anyone would notice if he snuck out now. Should he go and see Derek? Stiles decided that he would in fact check on Derek and that it would count as his last ten minutes of the day. Somebody had to do it, he told himself.

Somehow that thought gave him new energy and he hurried up the stairs to the rooms with patients. He'd never liked the corridor; it was so sad and depressing to see all the sick patients struggling to keep living. They often cried and sometimes you could hear people scream. Unsteady heart beats sipped out from a shut door and Stiles kept going, trying to keep the noise out. Some days it was easy to ignore all the pain oozing in the air and instead see all the good he was doing to help others but the instant he became tired his ears could only hear the raw pain that filled these corridors.

Relieved to finally be at the door, Stiles opened it and found Derek to be sleeping. The sight of other man looking both concerned and scared even when sleeping made Stiles' heart clench. When Stiles closed the door behind him Derek opened his eyes wide open. He looked scared and Stiles just stood in the doorway, awkwardly shifting his weight from one leg to another.

Derek blinked a few times and then turned his eyes toward Stiles.

"Light sleeper, huh?" Stiles said, determined not to let this be one of those heartfelt I-feel-so-bad-for-you visits.

Derek grunted something and looked out of the window. His jaw was tense for a short moment, as if he was collecting himself.

"Sorry if I disturbed you," Stiles said when a sudden wave of politeness and a feeling of his actions being wrong washed over his body.

Derek didn't say anything and Stiles guessed _, hoped_ , that they were cool. Well, as cool as you could be with a person who laid in a hospital bed with a bad concussion.

Stiles reached for the chair that someone had moved out of the way and he placed it by the bed where it belonged. The room was so horribly boring.

"A penny for your thoughts."

Derek just looked at him for a while and Stiles felt uncomfortable under the other man's gaze.

"Just trying to figure out why you're here."

"This is my workplace."

"I know. I just... Never mind." Derek looked away and seemed to try to control his head.

Stiles didn't want to let Derek dwell in his pain and therefore kept going.

"I... You know I found you, right? It just would feel weird if I was to ignore your existence." He shrugged.

*****

"Did... did you find me?" Derek felt his body freeze (well, it was already still but his blood kind of froze).

"Yeah." Stiles touched his hair and looked at the black TV-screen on the wall. The brown haired nurse rose while Derek's brain tried to process this new data.

"Is this working?" Stiles said and nodded towards the screen.

Derek simply shrugged and tried not to overthink. He cleared his throat and fought the splash of sickness that rushed over him.

Stiles stood with his back towards Derek when he continued to speak.

"Actually, Derek, you scared the shit out of me. Usually I don't get scared easily but when I found your lifeless body with blood and everything... I freaked out." Stiles laughed and he sounded a bit nervous.

"Promise not to throw yourself out of a plane when I'm close to you again."

Derek snorted.

"Can't promise."

Stiles pushed a few buttons on the TV and suddenly the screen lit up. Stiles turned around with a smile that suggested victory. The nurse looked so tired and had bags under his eyes. He nearly looked as bad as Derek himself.

"So, Derek, did it hurt when you fell from the sky?"

Derek let out a groan both towards his inner pain and towards Stiles because that was a terrible joke. Stiles had a smug look on his face when he returned to the chair with a remote control in his hand.

"You're never going to get rid of that joke now."

*****

Derek looked both angry and slightly amused. Stiles wondered if he was in a lot of pain.

"What're you gonna do 'bout it? Kick me with that lump of a leg ya' got there?"

"I'm sure that would actually hurt quite a lot," Derek responded.

"Not as much as falling from the sky, angel." Stiles blew a kiss towards Derek who just shook his head before turning it towards the screen. The man was oddly attractive even when lying in a hospital bed with some weird band-aid wrapped around his head.

"Shouldn't you be up walking anyways?" Stiles asked.

"Deaton said that he thought I should wait for at least a day after waking up. Not sure why."  
Stiles only hummed as an answer. Deaton liked to do stuff without telling people why.

Stiles followed Derek's eyes to the TV-screen. He felt oddly at peace when in this room. The world outside seemed to disappear and his mood really went into space even if he was in there with a grumpy and hurt man whom he'd known for like... one official day?

The quiet noise from the TV kept out the sounds from the hospital that went through the thin walls and Stiles thanked whoever had decided to put TVs in every room.

"Reruns of _The Office_?" Derek said.

"Huh, seems like it. Awesome!" Stiles replied and turned his focus back to the screen on the wall. The loss of sleep made it hard for him to focus for a longer period of time.

"So, Derek, I'll leave you with this wonderful show now." He stood up.

"What if I want to turn it off?" Derek asked.

"You should not want to do that, Derek," Stiles said but then added a bit more.

"But if you want it to shut it off, don't. The noise from that TV keeps the screams and crying out."

Derek seemed to think about what Stiles had said.

"Okay."

"See you. Don't go anywhere, okay?" Stiles said before turning around and leaving the room. He could _hear_ how Derek rolled his eyes and grunted as he laughed to himself. It felt great to actually laugh for a bit.

*****

Derek let himself sink further back into the bed. It wasn't super comfortable but it actually worked. A lot had happened but he actually caught himself being in a good mood and that scared him. He was scared because even if he told himself that he was in a good mood because he was going to walk the next day, he knew that the happiness was coming from talking to the nurse.

The nurse, Stiles, was far too nice to him and Derek's own good mood had been caused by him. In some strange way Stiles had brought his spirit up, he wasn't tripping on his toes around Derek and that made him calm down and not think so damn much. It was a lot easier to get angry with someone who constantly was tiptoeing around him, waiting for him to lash out. Over the years, he'd grown allergic to people who did that. Sadly, most people did it around him when they got to know that his family was nonexistent. Mostly they made him feel special, sad, strange and odd. Whenever people was tiptoeing around him he started to think about why they were doing it and that never ended great. Most days he woke up and felt okay; not think about guilt, not thinking about how he was the only one left. But, when those days arrived and people started treating him like something that was about to break or snap every second his mood changed. They reminded him that he was supposed to never forget what happened, because other people wouldn't. And, after a while of that treatment he'd became what everyone wanted him to be.

But the fact that Stiles had brought his mood up scared him. Derek didn't want to be dependant on others for his happiness and he didn't feel like trusting anyone.

Derek sighed; his head was hurting and his body felt heavy and thick. He let the voices from the TV lull him into a dreamless sleep.


	4. Trying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I love Twenty One Pilots. They always speak my mind and their singer happends to sound exactly like Stiles himself. That's why some of their songs are "featured" on this fic. They are great.

_I'm trying, I'm trying to sleep_  
_But I can't, but I can't when you all have_  
 _Guns for hands_  
**-Twenty One Pilots, Guns for Hands**

*******

And just like that, the whole visiting Derek-thingy really became a _thing._ It became part of Stiles daily routine and soon he found the grumpy man to be one of his only steady points during his workdays. He had tried to ask Deaton when Derek was supposed to be released but the doctor seemed distant and had only answered in riddles that left Stiles confused and angry with the doctor.

It wasn't that Stiles wanted Derek to leave, more or less the other thing. As embarrassing as it was to admit to, it happened to be the truth. Stiles didn't want Derek to leave now, he liked to throw around and play with words with the other man. For some reason Derek reminded him of his best friend Scott. Why that was he did not know since Scott was the happiest and nicest person alive and Derek was… Well, he was grumpy and angry on the outside. His insides were a bit nicer and he had a depth that Stiles guessed one could possibly drown in. Still, there were something about the guy that reminded Stiles about his best friend whom he'd left in Beacon Hills.

Other than Derek reminding him of his awesome friend, Stiles himself and Derek shared a connection. In some weird way they both carried tragedies; both had dead parents. Well, Stiles "only" had one dead mom and both of Derek's parents were dead but they shared the pain of losing someone close to them. If Derek knew about that connection or not was something Stiles doubted but he knew it existed.

So, seeing Derek kind-of walking around the hospital corridors and then crash into his bed again only to complain about his head and body made Stiles kind of sad because if he could walk that meant that he soon would be out of the hospital. A shit-ton of thoughts dropped in his head whenever that happened and right now, walking along a corridor during his break, he couldn't stop them.

"Hey, Derek!" Stiles called out upon seeing Derek sitting in the small so-called "living room" for the patients. To call it a living room was really an insult towards real living rooms.

Derek looked horribly out of place and when he caught his name being called he turned around to greet Stiles back. Stiles thought that he'd never seen Derek more relieved than now. Probably because he was sitting next to some old lady who Stiles knew to always talk about her aching hips a teeny bit too often.

*****

Derek hated the whole kind-of walking, as Stiles called it. It was a good name for the pathetic moves he did to get his dreary body around, kind-of walking. If Derek had been made disabled by the accident he wasn't sure how he would've handled it. Hell, he was barely handling his current situation. The only thing that kept him going at the moment was the badly placed disbelief of the whole thing.

Derek was a very impatient person by nature and to not be able to walk faster than a tortoise nearly turned him into madman. He held back yet another swearword that played on his lips; the nurses were already giving him funny glances and he did not need this to make their looks even funnier.  
A scream made Derek turn his head. He was tired of the screams, the cries and the people of the hospital. The only thing that made him somewhat feel like a human being again was Stiles. The nurse didn't look at him as if he was somebody that desperately needed Stiles' help to survive and he also treated him like another person. It wasn't that the other nurses weren't nice; they were. But they were just too nice, too helpful and too quick at treating him like a child with a punched in skull. Stiles was trying and Derek felt himself wanting to try as well. He wasn't sure what he wanted out of the other man but it felt quite alright to talk and laugh, at least when he'd decided that he would let himself talk and laugh.  
Derek sat down, his leg was hurting like hell and he wondered if he would ever be able to run again. Deaton had told him that he _probably_ would and that he would _probably_ make a full recovery because apparently Derek had already showed clear signs of having some super healing flesh.

The pain made him think clearer. It let his mind out of the haze called "morphine". He didn't want the painkillers in his system but the nurses were resistant to his desperate words of despair when they told him to swallow the disgusting pills.

Derek forced himself to stand up yet again and almost-walk into the so-called "living room" that was filled with sick people that desperately sought conversation. He sighed and then sat down in the least uncomfortable chair.

After ten minutes of an old lady trying to gain his compassion about her aching hips and ten minutes of him ignoring her, Derek heard his name being called.

"Hey, Derek!" Relief washed over him and he thanked Stiles internally for saving him from the old lady. He felt uncomfortable around people who just kept talking and left him silent. Those situations always made him feel weird and left him wondering if he actually was visible.

Derek let out some bad excuses to the lady and then rose to his feet. His leg hurt but it had been worse.

"Stilinski," he greeted him.

"Man, you've _got_ to stop calling me that. Makes me sound like some polish war hero."

Derek felt his lips being dragged into an unwilling smile.

"You wouldn't be a war hero, Stilinski. You'd be the coward that lost the war."

"Ha-ha, so very funny, Mr Hale." Stiles shook his head and hid a laugh behind a dead serious mask.

"For your knowledge, I'm pretty sure that I would've been the mastermind behind the war tactics. I'll let you know that my brain is a rather fine-tuned problem-solver after all my years as a professional sneak-reader of police reports."

Without them knowing, they now stood by the coffee machine that made horrible coffee.

Stiles pushed a few buttons and made a face when receiving the cup.

"Talking about law enforcement; this should not be allowed to be called 'coffee'. This is just a hot, brown and caffeinated liquid seasoned with the tears of children."  
"You sure know how to make something sound appetising."

Stiles turned to Derek with a wide and toothy grin spread across his face after taking his first sip. Derek couldn't help but stare at his lips, plump after having ingested the hot beverage. Coffee had stained them and Derek forced his eyes back to Stiles' eyes, hoping Stiles hadn't noticed his eyes being in places they did not belong.

"Delicious!" Stiles called out. Derek rolled his eyes because Stiles was... Stiles.

*****

"Derek?"

"Yes?"

Derek turned his eyes towards Stiles who sat next to him. The clock was something that Stiles would call "evening" (11 PM) and the nurse was about to go home.

"The doctors have looked into your case and you seem to have skydived quite a lot. So, what happened that day?"

"My parachute didn't release properly." Derek looked into Stiles' eyes truthfully and Stiles gave him an intense look back. His brown eyes were... incredibly intense and in that moment Derek would in fact admit to feel tempted to reach out and touch Stiles' face.

"Yeah, you've said that, but what did _really_ happen?" The moment was over and Derek shrugged, trying his best to not understand what Stiles meant.  
Derek was stubborn but Stiles was even worse.

"Derek. What happened?"

Derek swallowed harshly to try and get away the nervousness that attacked him when he realised what he was about to say.

"You know how people say they get a kick out of skydiving?" He was looking at the ceiling now.

"Mm?"

"I've skydived more times than I can count and the kick kind of goes away after a few times. I wanted to feel the kick of adrenaline one more time."

"One more time before what?"

Derek didn't utter a word.

"Oh my god, Derek. _Were you trying to kill yourself?_ "

His head jerked back and he was looking into Stiles' panicking eyes once again. He couldn't believe he'd only known that crazy nurse for less than a conscious week, it felt like a lifetime.

"No, you stupid. I was thinking about quitting skydiving."

Stiles was still staring at him.

"I still think you have a death wish."

Derek just shrugged and bit his tongue to not utter the words that were on his mind. _'I'd never let her have the pleasure of that,'_ was what he wanted to say. And along with that, there were a lot more emotion on his insides, swirling around like butterflies in a storm. The butterflies sought shelter but Derek's insides had been demolished and now he was merely a black whole filled with butterflies trying to survive in his hurricane of thoughts. To say the least, Derek wasn't used to feel a lot of emotions.

*****

Stiles arrived home late two nights after his 'don't-kill-yourself' talk and he couldn't be more tired. He felt like a legitimate zombie that tried to walk the earth but kept failing because of its' horrible sense of balance.

Stiles successfully opened the door and the sight caught him off-guard. His apartment was sad and so very empty. It wasn't like he ever did anything other than sleep in there but it still looked weirdly bare and depressing.

Ignoring the matter, he staggered into the room and looked at his clock on the wall. The realisation made him swear. Shit, his dad was probably going to call him any second now and Stiles was not in any condition to talk. He was only in condition to sleep for at least ten hours and then drown himself in even more coffee. Tomorrow it was weekend for him but he had no plans whatsoever so Stiles guessed that a few more hours of not sleeping would be okay.

When his phone called fifteen minutes later he'd tried to bring his energy back by downing two strong cups of coffee. He still felt like a zombie but not a zombie that failed at walking as often as his previous self would've done.

"Hi, dad," he greeted his dad. When his dad answered his greeting Stiles suddenly felt alive and calm. It had been far too long since they'd talked last and even if Stiles rushed through his days he found the time to miss his dad a lot. He'd been away from Beacon Hills ever since he'd graduated college. To only see his dad during bigger holidays was sometimes hard. Work ate up all of Stiles' time and he let it. Work was something Stiles could disappear into and it made him forget all of his problems and how horribly alone he actually was in this big city where he only knew a handful of people.

"So, son, what's happened since we last talked?"

"Not much. I only ever work nowadays."  
His dad laughed fondly.

"You remind me of myself. Just don't overdo it, okay?"

Stiles agreed.

"Did it work out for that man that you found?"

"Yes, he's... great. His name is Derek Hale and-"

"Hale?" His dad interrupted him and Stiles fell silent.

"Yes?"

"There used to live a Hale-family in Beacon Hills but their house burned down in a fire about ten years ago."

"Oh my god," was all Stiles managed to say.

"I remember that fire, it was horrible. It was on the outskirts of Beacon Hills though and I don't believe I knew who actually lived there, I just remember the grey smoke that filled everyone's lungs for weeks."

"There was one kid that kept alive in that fire and his name was Derek Hale. All his family died there."

Something thick and sad fell over Stiles and he had to sit down on his bed. He stared out in the air but he didn't see a thing.

"I'd forgotten about that. I just... that was the year mum died." His voice broke.

"I know, son."

They sat in silence for a while and Stiles wondered how this nice conversation had turned so quickly. After a while he cleared his throat.

"So, can Mr Parachute really be the Derek Hale with a burnt family?"

Stiles knew that his dad was making a face because of his way of putting the question.

"I have no clue, Stiles. You'll have to see yourself."

They kept talking for a while but Stiles couldn't really let go of the fact that him and Derek might've lived in the same small town. Or the fact that Derek's family had been burnt alive. When Stiles and his dad said goodbye and Stiles lay in his bed and stared into the darkness he decided to actually return to the hospital the following day, but not for work.

*****

He hadn't expected the day to turn out this way. Derek wasn't complaining but he hadn't been expecting Stiles to come and pick him up on his day off. He hadn't expected Stiles to come and pick him up only to take them to the lively city. He hadn't expected Stiles to care enough to pick him up and it'd caught him off guard.

"Stiles, I can't do it." His heart was beating.

"Of course you can, Mr I-jump-out-of-planes-because-it's-fun. Come on!"

Derek muttered something under his breath but rose to his feet. The city was moving and Derek hated feeling like an invalid with his stiff leg. At least he had "normal" clothes on his body. They weren't his own; he'd had to lend some from Stiles which meant that they sat uncomfortably tight in some places. Again, he was not complaining, but he wasn't used to the situation and he was scared. Scared of talking, scared of talking, scared of saying too much... Scared of letting someone in.

They both stood outside Stiles' jeep.

"Come on, let's go inside," Stiles said and nodded towards the small bakery on the side of the road.

His face started twisting when he started moving. He couldn't stop the twitching of pain when he moved so he just let his unwilling face show his pain to the world.

Stiles walked by his side, not even looking if Derek needed any help. In a way, that was what Derek liked about Stiles; he let Derek do this by himself but helped him if he _really_ needed help.

The bakery had a very cosy setting. Derek heard people laughing and talking but it wasn't horribly loud.

Stiles walked up to the counter.

"Two breakfasts for me and this man," Stiles pointed towards Derek. The cashier smiled and nodded.

"Thank you," Stiles added and smiled widely.

"I thought this was a bakery?" Derek asked when they sat down at a small table near a window.

"It is, but they make awesome breakfasts as well."  
Derek looked around in the small bakery and tried to imagine himself sitting here before the accident. He didn't fit.

"Why'd you take me here?" He asked, because he was curious. Stiles had been having a day off and yet he reappeared in the hospital only to take Derek out to eat breakfast. Derek's brain kept suggesting some rather romantically reasons but he shot them down one after one.

"I only did this to save the other nurses from your bitter snark," Stiles smiled. He was trying, it was very visible. It was as if he was holding out a hand, waiting for Derek to take it. On Stiles lips there were a question, asking Derek to trust him and for him to try as well. But that question was also asking him to put his past behind him.

"Very noble of you to sacrifice your day off only to spend it with a patience."

"Well, I _am_ a very noble gentleman."

"No, you're not." Now Derek smiled, because he couldn't imagine Stiles being noble. Stiles was many things; loyal, ironic, funny, sometimes adorabl- ... No. The point was that Derek could not imagine Stiles being noble.

Before Stiles had the time say something in return their food arrived and Derek had to admit, it looked awfully appetizing.

Their waiter smiled at them and wished them to have a nice meal. Stiles took it upon himself to reassure the waiter that they would indeed have a nice meal.

Derek had to look at the plate for a while to actually decide what to start of with. His eyes fell on the pancakes and he grabbed his silverware.

"You don't want me to cut your food for you?" Stiles asked with a "funny" smile on his face. Derek raised his eyebrows and shot Stiles a dead serious look.

"Do you want me to cut _you_ up?"

Stiles held up his hands.

"Hey, this is what I'm talking about. Bitter snark, Derek, bitter snark."

Derek shook his head and hid a smile. That damn nurse always made him smile even when he didn't want to. And just like that, Derek realised that he'd already taken Stiles' metaphorical hand. He'd agreed to try and that made him smile. The smile felt so real and when realising it was on his face, Stiles smiled back. Something tingled in him.

Their table fell silent when they ate but it was nothing too uncomfortable. After Derek had finished half of his pancakes, which were delicious by the way, he took up the conversation.

"So what's your story, Stiles?" This was him showing that he'd taken the hand and that he would _try_.

"What do you mean?" Stiles looked up from his food with a blank face.

"What is your story, Stiles?" Derek repeated.

"Oh." Stiles said and took a sip of coffee.

"I mean… I grew up in a small town called Beacon Hills.." Derek zoomed out. Beacon Hills? That was where his parents had… He could not finish the thought.

"Derek, are you okay?" Stiles said and placed a reassuring hand on Derek's shoulder.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." He smiled but he knew he probably looked like a drowned cat.

So Stiles moved on with his story, telling Derek that he grew up in Beacon Hills with his dad and mum. Derek tried to ignore the city's name and thought about his internal promise to try.

"Everything was sunshine and rainbows up until my mum got cancer and died when I was eleven. The cancer took her out fast." Stiles looked sad and Derek wanted to place his hand in that reassuring way that Stiles had done to him only a couple of minutes ago.

"Well, that led to me wanting to work in the medicine industry. So, I moved out here after graduating college and ever since then I've lived and worked here. Taa-daa!"

"By your own?"

Stiles took a bite of scrambled eggs.

"Mmhmm," he nodded.

Derek nodded as well.

"Me too."

*****

"Don't do it again."

"What?" Stiles could see that he'd caught Derek off-guard so he cleared his throat to get rid of the awkward lump in his throat.

"Don't do anything stupid just to get a kick."

Derek shook his head.

"No, I'm serious. Dead serious."

Something twitched in Derek's mouth when Stiles dropped the badly placed word 'dead'.

"The next time I won't be there to catch you." Yeah, why was he doing this again? It was awkward.

"Don't do it. Do you hear me?"

"I won't." Derek said and Stiles could feel Derek's eyes upon his face.  
Stiles couldn't look back, he had his eyes on the road when they were returning to the hospital. He was very much aware of Derek being next to him. They had ate breakfast together and it was only now he realised how much that seemed like a date. His heart was beating so swiftly that he wondered if Derek was able to hear it.  
There was something in the air, tension or whatever and Stiles was tripping around it, trying to avoid the force field in between them.

He wanted to ask Derek about Beacon Hills but he couldn't. Instead he said something stupid that made Derek roll his eyes even if they both knew that he was laughing on the inside.


	5. To Learn to Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a cute one. Heh.  
> Also, I'm just going to go ahead and warn you right now: this story is kind of sad (not right now though). Uhm... Yeah.

_I want to learn to love in kinds_   
_'Cause you were all I ever longed for_

_The shelter, you better keep the wolf back from the door_   
_He wanders ever closer every night_   
_And how he waits begging for blood_   
_I promised you everything would be fine_

**-Mumford and Sons, The Wolf** __  
  


**********

Derek smiled even if he didn't want to. It probably looked fake and plastered because that was what it felt like but at this instant he could not force himself to give the nurse a wider and happier smile. The fakest of fake smiles was the realest smile he could make up at the moment.

"You should not drive until you've been given clearance from Doctor Deaton so I hope you have someone close to you who will help you with everything." The nurse's wide smile did not match Derek's half-hearted attempt at a whole-hearted and real smile.

"That sounds..-"

The nurse named Jennifer interrupted him with even more words that was formed into sentences Derek did not really listen to.

"And we'll give you some painkillers for that little head of yours." More wide smiles that Derek didn't even try to mirror.

"So, I hope you're ready with everything." Smiles.

"When do I need to be out of here?"

"As quickly as possible, actually. This room is needed."

Derek nodded, suddenly tired. He wondered if Jennifer ever grew tired of herself.

"Sure, I'll be... out the door soon enough."  
"Great, great, great... Don't forget that you can't drive on your own." With that, the nurse rushed out of the room to annoy some other patient that did not want to leave the hospital. Derek didn't particularly like the whole clinical white and clean place, but it was never quiet and he never really felt alone. If he were to be true to himself, he would actually miss Stiles. And also, being back to the "real world" there was a lot of things that he had to take care of; explanations and excuses he didn't want to think about. Laying in a hospital bed and grunting at the horrible food they served turned him into a different him. When returning to the "real" world he'd have to go back into his normal self and deal with everything that he'd avoided for a long period of time.

He quickly shook the thoughts off his mind and eyed his surroundings. The room was tiny and did not really hold anything he thought of as valuable. What did he really have to pack? If mental baggage didn't count, then he'd be all good. No packing needed whatsoever. Derek let his eyes wander once more. At last he reached for a small hospital teddy bear that usually was given to small children with sickness. This particular teddy bear was something Stiles had given to him when he'd said that Derek acted as a big child. Derek looked at the small bear, held it in his hand and felt its' light weight. Since he didn't have a family and hadn't told any of his friends that still thought he was on some sort of vacation, he didn't have any personal items in the room, except for the bear in his hand. Quickly, he took the bear and decided to keep it. Nothing to be embarrassed about.

It felt good to change from the white hospital clothes to some normal clothes that the doctors had taken off his body when he arrived. It was kind of surreal and awkward to think that all those doctors had seen his naked body but he guessed they were used to it. His clothes under the skydiving-gear had been casual; jeans and a plain, soft, grey t-shirt. To his surprise they weren't shredded and torn to pieces and he wondered how that had happened.

Derek sighted and wondered if he should call a cab now or when he "checked out".

Then he heard footsteps outside the door and then Stiles stood in the threshold.

"So, can I drive you home?"

*****

Stiles had sped up his pace at work when he'd heard that Derek was about to be released. He liked the term 'released' only because it sounded like the patients was prisoners that was about to become released into the _real world_. Well, either way he'd tried to speed up until he'd got stuck with some old man with a fractured leg. After having rushed around with him to different rooms he'd finally gotten his hands free enough to rush to Mrs McCall and ask her to _please let him drive Derek home_. She'd laughed a 'knowing' (?) laugh and then agreed, if he was to add two hours of work the next day. Stiles had just thanked her and then continued his sprint up to Derek's room, hoping the man hadn't gotten out just yet.

Reaching the door, he'd just thrown it open and found Derek standing in the middle of the room, his hand around the stupid teddy bear that Stiles had given him. He was dressed in jeans and a grey t-shirt and damn it if he didn't look good. For a second he let himself think about how that material felt and then he opened his mouth.

"So, can I drive you home?"

He realised that he was slightly out of breath and that he sounded somewhat strangled, which was nice. Always sound strangled while asking someone for you to drive them to their home.

Derek just huffed.

"Sure."

Stiles tried to not lean on the doorframe because he was still feeling a little out of shape.

"Well.. Yeah. Come on, let's go, Mr Comatose." He turned around and tried to walk out looking cool without failing miserably. After a few steps he heard Derek's a bit longer and clumsier steps follow his.

"Rushing up only to see me, Stiles?"

"No," Stiles corrected him, "rushing up only to drive you home. Simply because you need another turn in my awesome car." Which was a lie but who cared? It wasn't like Derek was able to hear when he was lying. Also, sarcasm is not lies, it's simply bending the truth and since Derek also spoke fluent sarcasm they were good.

"Yeah, your car really is… something."

"Oh shut up! I bet your car isn't much better."

Stiles could _hear_ Derek smile when walking down the stairs. He could actually _hear him smile_ and he only turned slightly around to check if he was right. Bingo!

"Actually… I've got a black Camaro somewhere near my apartment that happens to belong to me."

Stiles grunted and turned around.

"Really, Derek?"

Derek gave him a smug look.

"Guess it's a tie then. My car, your car…"

Stiles sighted one more time to really push on how much of a douchebag Derek Hale really were.

"Are you like super rich or something? Because if you are you owe me money."

Stiles looked at Derek who froze for a second but then relaxed again. Then he shrugged.

"What would I owe you money for?"

"I saved your life, remember that? Oh right, no, you were too busy nearly _dying_. But you didn't because of me!" Stiles smiled widely and Derek rolled his eyes.

"Admit it, Mr Comatose, you needed me!"

Derek shot him one of his really perfected "you're-weird-and-I'm-trying-so-hard-not-to-smile"-looks before shoving his shoulder lightly.

Twenty minutes later Derek was a free man and they sat in Stiles' jeep, on their way to Derek's apartment.

"Left." Stiles turned the steering wheel in slight panic, afraid to miss the turn. He barely made it and felt like he sat on needles.

"Fuck, Derek, you need to tell me sooner. You're going to be the death of me, I swear." He ran his hand through his hair and Derek grinned at him which made Stiles' heart do stuff. Quickly, he turned his eyes to the road again. Focus.

"Is this your grand plan? To have me killed in traffic only so you can get rid of me?"

"Maybe."

*****

"Is this your apartment? As in only yours and you don't share it with anyone?" Stiles eyes were big as plates and Derek only shrugged, feeling a bit awkward. The loft was a bit... boastful and over the top but it was comfortable and Derek really liked the view. The apartment itself wasn't very luxury but it had a perfect view over the skyline of the city.

"I knew it, you _are_ super rich!" Stiles sat in Derek's couch and looked at the windows. He looked so very at home and the sight made Derek feel weirdly warm. Stiles shouldn't sit so laid back. After having been standing a bit uncomfortable in the middle of the room for a while Derek joined Stiles on the couch. He didn't want to sit too close to the other man and therefore simply leaned on one of the armrests, careful not to put too much pressure on his bad leg.

"Dude, this couch is really nice."

"I guess," he shrugged. He'd never really though about it; the couch just happened to be his and he happened to sit in it sometimes but he'd never really thought about if it was comfortable or not.

"What do you have to work with to get this kind of apartment?" Stiles asked and Derek felt uncomfortable. He always felt weird when talking about his "work".

"Well, I... I'm a stuntman."

*****

Had Derek just revealed that he was a stuntman? As in somebody that works in the movie industry to do incredibly dangerous things?

"That's way cooler than being a nurse," Stiles sighed and Derek smiled and stopped looking as tense. Stiles wondered why he'd hid his profession when it sounded as awesome as this. Maybe something was wrong or it just wasn't as awesome as it sounded. Or, Derek was merely a grumpy asshole that desperately wanted to be mysterious. Probably the latter.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner? I could've been skinning you about every detail of a movie set for these last couple of weeks instead of actually talking!"

"Exactly," Derek said and looked a bit loosened up as he raised his brows and finally turned his eyes to meet Stiles'. Electric energy was flying in the air for some moments before Derek turned his eyes back to the windows. A slight shiver ran through Stiles' body.

Derek always seemed to have too many thoughts on his mind and it was rather sad seeing how much he was turned to himself.

"So that's what all that skydiving was about," Stiles said and joined Derek in looking out at the big window, out over the city line.

"Yeah, it all kind of started there."

Stiles looked at Derek, wanted him to tell him more but Derek stayed quiet after that and Stiles guessed that he didn't want to talk about it. Yeah, definitely seeking the mystery.

"And yet you fractured your leg when simply jumping on your own. Are you sure you're really good?"

Derek rolled his eyes but looked slightly entertained.

"I'm on some sort of vacation right now so at least it doesn't really affect my work." Way to avoid his question, _Derek Hale_.

"You want coffee or anything?" Derek asked and Stiles nodded.

When Derek stood up and walked over to the small counter in a corner, Stiles also raised up and felt eyes on his back when he moved around the apartment. Snooping? No. Looking around? Yes!

He stopped at the bookcase, because he knew for a fact that there was a lot to learn from what people read. It mostly contained thick literature with names Stiles had never heard of. He'd read a few of them but nothing that he could remember clearly. The bookcase contained no photos or clues about Derek's past and Stiles felt a little let down. He didn't want to snoop but he did wonder if this Derek Hale was the same Derek Hale that had gotten his house burnt down in Stiles home town. Yes, he was curious but he didn't want to ask, he knew how jumpy and mysterious Derek was. There was probably a reason to that cautiousness.

Stiles felt oddly at peace when walking around the apartment. There was a comfortable silence going on and a small background noise of coffee in the making.

"So Derek, how's the head?"

"What do you mean?" Derek grunted.

"Oh, you know, is your head feeling fine today, maybe a bit frisky?" He smiled sarcastically but kept it friendly.

"No, how is that concussed head of yours feeling?" he then added.

"I'm okay," he said and turned around to take out two coffee mugs. He filled them with the dark liquid.

"I'm guessing that tastes way better than that hospital crap they keep feeding me," Stiles said. Derek took the two mugs and Stiles made grabby hands until he had a mug in his hand. As they started sipping their coffee the conversation came back again. Derek was a surprisingly good talker if you knew how to actually make him talk. They laughed and talked for a while, about safe things, not about the past or personal stuff because that seemed to be sacred ground when talking to Derek. It was obvious he didn't want to talk about such stuff and the only way he could've made it clearer was by literally holding a sign that said something along the lines of " _DO NOT TALK ABOUT MY LIFE. THANK YOU. ALSO FUCK YO_ U."

Then, suddenly, Stiles looked at his arm watch and the time blew up in his face.

"Oh, uh, Derek, I really need to get going." He said and nearly jumped to his feat.

"Thank you so much for the... eh.. coffee and talk. You're not as bad as you let on," he smiled.

"Thank you for the kind compliment. I'll take it to the grave." They sat close and Stiles felt the energy buzzing under his skin once again. Derek's eyes was so close and also... his lips. Stiles glanced at them and then jumped to his feet before doing something actually stupid like kissing them.

He cleared his throat and felt uncomfortable.

"So, I guess I'll see you around, yeah?" He said and smiled.

Then Stiles left the building in a hurry.

*****

After Stiles stormed out of the apartment in a hurry of excuses, goodbyes and a mess of limbs Derek sat in his couch and looked at the skyline. His heart was beating, the tension still lingering in his mind. A warning bell was ringing somewhere distant in his mind, telling him that he was about to get too close and that he was trying too hard. Kate crashed his head and the warning bell echoed.

Derek tried to distract the thoughts of Kate by thinking of Stiles. He could not wrap his head around Stiles, he was a chapter of his own. Stiles was the final chapter of escalation; nobody knew how to read it or how to interpret it. Maybe Derek was a bad reader but he knew his bookcase told him differently.

Instead, he sighed and starting clearing the small coffee table from the cups while trying to keep his mind busy. He was hungry and his head was aching. His fridge was full of old food and he raided his freezer for something edible. When he found an old heat up pizza he'd decided that Stiles was nothing like Kate. She'd taken over his mind with fierce and manipulative techniques. Stiles was the complete opposite; he'd conquered Derek's mind by his constant stream of words and nervous hands.

Derek took out the pizza. When it was in the oven he took a well deserved shower and enjoyed the heavy stream of water running down his body. He hadn't realised how much he'd actually missed taking a good shower with a good stream, wasn't aware that there could be such a feeling of loss for something so simple. After getting a concussion he'd discovered how much harder it was to keep his thoughts in line. They wanted to trail off and he had a hard time stopping them from thinking all kinds of things that made him feel strange. Usually he found it easy to keep his mind off of thinking about feelings but at that moment he'd never had a harder time restraining his mind from the dangerous path. Thinking too hard about feelings always led to a lugubrious state of mind which later led to doing stupid stuff.

Derek could not shake off a buzzing feeling that Stiles had left him to drain himself in and it didn't seem to wash off when he stood in the shower. He sighted, for he knew that the stupid doctor Deaton had told him to stay away from all sorts of training until his head was thoroughly healed. The training was something he would miss; it was his go-to de-stresser and it also helped with sorting thoughts.

He felt uneasy when he stepped out of the shower. It was steaming from the shower cabin and his mirror was filled with a thick mist. His reflection was hidden from himself and for a second he wondered if he looked tense. After having opened the door to the bathroom to let some steam out he could see his reflection.

His hair was dripping with water and his skin full of small drops of water that made his skin shine. The broad shoulder didn't look tense and his face looked like it used to, except for a few small scars on his left cheek that the fall had left him with. Maybe his brows were a bit furrowed so he let them down and saw his face soften. Looking himself in the eyes and taking long breathes was a way of calming himself down and kind of meditate that some therapist had taught him long ago. He'd always hated the therapy and he'd never really talked to the therapists but that exercise was something he'd always kept in his mind.

Derek dried his body, threw on underwear and an old shirt. When he sat himself down in his couch and looked out over the skyline his phone started vibrating. The phone was next to him and he held it in his hand for a second before taking a huge breathe and accepting the call.

" _DEREK HALE!_ How dare you turn off your phone for weeks and not call me? You know you were in _a hospital_? I'm very, very, very angry with you right now! You do not even have a clue!"

Derek let Erica's word wash over him. He deserved them, he really did. Leaving his friend and colleague to herself for weeks, only texting her one cryptic message was a bit over the top, even for him. It felt nice to be scolded, actually. He let her talk on until she went quiet. How she knew that he'd been in a hospital was a mystery to him but then again, she'd always been at least one step ahead of him.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"It's okay," she answered, sounding calmer.

They were silent for a while.

"So how did it happen? Did you fall when filming? Did you get kicked of set?"

"No, it actually happened while I was skydiving alone," he said dryly.

The tenseness in Erica's voice disappeared when she laughed.

"You big fool."

The phone call went on for thirty minutes and ended with Erica forcing him to promise her to have lunch together some day and he'd agreed that yes, he would. Usually he would've dragged it out and played bitter for a while but this time he didn't because he knew he'd done wrong.

As he got ready for bed and then laid down next to his bedside table where the teddy bear stood he couldn't help but wonder if somewhere, Stiles, the very opposite of Kate, was laying in his bed as well.


	6. Reach Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, hey, heeeeeeey.  
> Fun fact: I'm a swede and I ain't got no beta. So all the mistakes are mine. Aouch.

_Reach out like me_  
_Easily sucked in_  
_When I dance in disorder_  
_Do I want to make sense at all_  
_Oh no, no, no_  
_Not this time  
_**-The Dø, Trustful Hands**  

******

It was called a cleanse, right? Those things fitness people liked so much and liked to talk about with very dramatic and overly romanticized words. Stiles could imagine Derek talking about such things and he smiled to himself.  
Anyways, Stiles was on a cleanse, a cleanse from Derek. It hadn't been intentional from the start but as time had passed Stiles realised just how much he'd needed it. Stiles wasn't one to easily let go of a friend but this particular friend had been in Stiles' life for a few weeks and nearly swept him off of his feet. When leaving the hospital Derek had left an empty room that felt a little too empty, even when new patients slept there, ate there and even died there.

Stiles didn't feel too plaintive about the cleanse; it was necessary. Why? could one ask themselves.

Well, he'd grown far too attached for too quickly, _as usual_ , and he felt something pull on him. The pull wanted him to see Derek and made it tingle in his body when he thought of the other man. Of course he knew what that meant and even if he didn't care he was scared of what Derek might think. Yes, it was as simple as that; he did not want Derek to think ill of him.

So, instead, he drained himself in work. Hours upon hours of running around underground and over ground with patients in beds, patients in pain and patients in desperate need of medical help. It was a work that made his legs ache but it kept his mind off of thinking. Stiles knew that he could've kept on doing it forever; nobody was stopping him. His friend back in Beacon Hills knew nothing about his bad work-habits and he had no friends in his "new" city where he'd told himself he'd only stay for a short while until he'd gotten the right education and work experience to finally take another step in his education and maybe become a doctor.

In the end there was somebody that stopped him. A week after Derek had been signed out Mrs McCall stopped him and brought out her large eyes.

"Young man, what are you doing?" said the woman whom strangely enough had turned into some sort of a mother to Stiles.

Since Stiles was bad at lying he just played the “I've-done-no-wrong-what-do-you-mean” card very poorly.

"What do you mean?"

Stiles had never been a good card player.

"Stiles, you know what I mean. What is up with all these extra hours lately? Do you even sleep?"  
"Of course I sleep," he said lamely, trying desperately to save his sorry ass.

"Well, the bags under your eyes speak of the opposite."

Stiles looked away, afraid he'd lash out and cry or something even more pathetic that shouldn't be happening on one's workplace. He was twenty two for god’s sake, he shouldn’t be crying over petty things. Only, he felt younger and the lack of sleep made him extra sensitive and easy to get out of balance.

Mrs McCall's voice softened.

"Stiles, please, just... calm down, okay? Take a day off, sleep and eat well."

Stiles nodded, surely he'd do that. He wasn't one to turn down that sort of offer even if he'd probably end up laying on his couch all day long, sulking and eating pizza all by himself.

"Good. Now pack up, you still have two more hours left."

*****

Stressing wasn't Derek’s forte and it showed. His head was pounding with a heavy headache that didn't want to let go of its' harsh grip. The stupid concussion was getting better but he still hadn't gotten any sort of clearance to actually drive a car. Not that it had stopped him before, he wasn't particularly scared.

Instead Erica had driven him around for the whole day so he could have meetings with both his angry manager and the doctor. Derek was tired of listening to people telling him what he should do but as usual he just nodded and agreed. Yeah, he'd been so very stupid to jump out of that plane, he got it.

Erica also had blamed him for being _jumpy_ at the doctor's office. She'd given him some suspicious looks that Derek had ignored and when they got out from the place that made Derek feel weird she'd straight out asked him about it. He'd avoided the question until she'd reminded him that he'd ignored her for a longer period of time. Resigned, he'd told her briefly of his stay at the hospital and his newfound friend Stiles that he only mentioned quickly.

But of course Stiles' name had latched itself onto Erica's mind which caused _questions_. Derek Hale hated questions that he didn't have any answers to.

"Oh, so you like this nurse, right?"

Actually, false statements disguised as questions that he didn't have any answers to was worse.

"No," he barked out and realised far too soon that his answer would imply that he was actually lying and thinking something else.

"Oh god, you actually do! This is great, Derek!" She laughed and if she hadn't been driving the car, Derek would've had shoved her shoulder really hard.

Instead, he rolled his eyes because that was nearly his second best option.

"So he saved your life as well?" She whistled, enjoying herself way too much.  
"This is soooo romantic! I never expected you to be the type, but clearly I can be wrong." She blew her a kiss before turning her eyes back to the road.

Derek just flinched and tried to ignore her because he knew that if he would keep arguing with her she'd never let it go. Not that the odds looked good at that moment but he knew better than to keep pushing.

So, taking all that into count he wasn't sure why he hadn't contacted Stiles. Even when being alone he flinched at that word because it sounded like he wanted to hire Stiles, not be his friend. It all would've been a lot easier if Derek had asked for Stiles number but being the awkward person he was he'd never come around to it and Stiles hadn't asked him so there really were no way to contact each other.  
Sure, there were facebook but Derek was a little bit afraid of using that site. Sure, he had a profile but he rarely used it.

But since the accident he'd found himself scrolling through his new feed at the social media a few times every day which was more than he'd ever been on it. He hated to feel useless and restless, he wanted nothing more than to be independent again and being able to run, jump and to actually drive a car by his own.

*****

Stiles stared at his phone for a while. He'd only checked it because a notice had lightened up his screen when he laid by the TV but now he was actually staring.

A friend request. From _Derek Hale_. Stiles looked around the room and wondered if this was an episode of Punk'd because if it wasn't he would probably throw his fist in the air or do something equally as stupid and embarrassing.

After having checked his surroundings once more he threw that fist in the air and unlocked his phone.

How was Derek the one to actually send a friend request? Stiles had been the one to actually stalk Derek on the platform only a day after the accident and now it was the former comatosed man who sent the request.

Stiles shook his head when accepting it. For being smart he was rather stupid sometimes.

While the was loading and updating the site Stiles' mind rushed. He knew he wanted to write something and it was actually his turn to do something; Derek had already taken the first step.

So he clicked on the chat button and let his thumbs decide what was best to write.

" _The hospital is empty without you. Think I like it._ "

Two seconds later he erased that, cursing to himself. That was too mean, right? Instead, he looked at Derek's wall for some inspiration. His eyes stopped at Derek's profile picture because even if the man was beautiful it was pure gold. Derek was wearing sunglasses while standing in a plane with his freaking arms crossed. He was smiling but it looked plastered and other than that his face looked completely blank and Stiles could easily picture this scene taking place in an airplane somewhere.

" _Nice profile picture. Though you could've looked a little more intimidating_."

The response was fast.

" _says the guy holding a puppy in his picture_ "

 Stiles grinned.

" _At least it's cute._ "

" _shut up, stiles_ "

So much for a cleanse.

*****

Two days after the whole facebook thing Derek was sitting at a small coffee shop close to his apartment. Why? Waiting for Stiles.

He felt a bit nervous but tried to ignore it because why was he nervous anyways? They were just two friends going out to drink some coffee. Nothing weird with that, right?

Only it was because Derek didn't really have a lot of friends and the ones that he had didn't drink coffee. Instead they always drank tea and other herbal stuff, saying that coffee was horrible for the human body and that Derek really should cut out that source of poison.

Of course Derek hadn't listened, he wasn't much for the health-freak stuff. There, the hospital had changed him. Now that he no longer could train he felt his body getting doughier by every passing day and he hated how mushy he felt. Going from very a fit professional to doughy sick person wasn't fun at all.

"Hello there, mister Comatose!"

Derek looked up and saw Stiles approaching his table with a cup of coffee in his hand.

Stiles sat down in front of Derek whom hid a smile.

"Why do you keep calling me that?"

Stiles stared at him for a second while taking of his jacket and sitting down.

"You haven't seen _supernatural_?"

Stiles face looked like Derek just said something very forbidden.

"No?"

"My god, Derek! You _need_ to supernatural!"

Suddenly Stiles looked excited and Derek just raised an eyebrow, ignoring the fact that Stiles looked adorabl- NO.

"Isn't that a show about really stupid ghost hunters or something?"

"So you have seen it then?"

Derek took a sip of his coffee, still watching Stiles with a blank face.

"No, but my friend Erica keep terrorizing me about the stupid plot and how about some dude needs to deal with his unresolved sexual tension _with an angel_."

Stiles laughed and he looked so free, so happy. The aura of tiredness that had haunted the nurse in the hospital seemed to be gone and it was a good look on him.

"Oh, so a fellow Destiel-shipper; I _need_ to talk to this Erica!"

Stiles looked smug as he took a sip of his coffee and Derek just smiled a little. He couldn't hold back it, actually and it felt pretty good to let those uptight muscles in his face.

"You know all of that means nothing to me."

"I could be making it all up and you wouldn't even know it."

Derek shook his head and looked out of the window, hiding a smile.

"So how's the hospital?"

"Kind of quiet, actually. Peace is resting over the place once again now that your grumpy ass is out of there."

"Yeah?"

"Totally."

Stiles smiled widely at him and Derek drank his coffee. It wasn't very hot anymore and Derek liked it that way. He wasn’t a hard core coffee drinker and had never gotten used to it being steaming hot.

"So, now you know how the hospital is doing. How are _you_ doing?"

"Kind of quiet, actually."

Stiles rolled his eyes.

"I'm serious."

"I'm fine. It's just..." He stopped for a second, incapable of putting his thoughts into words. Derek wasn't very used to actually speaking.

"I've got this weird feeling over me. I want to move around but Deaton won't let me. My leg isn't a very big deal anymore but apparently my head is out of it."

Stiles nodded.

"While Deaton actually is a cryptic bastard he is a good doctor and is probably just doing the right thing."  
"It's still frustrating."  
"I know. But seriously, a doctor should be open about things but Deaton is just not anything of that. One time I asked him about a patient and he just responded with a blank face, telling me he didn't know. The same day that same patient was released because Deaton had held some sort of conference about the patient’s status of health."

Derek laughed and felt a little bit better. His head wasn't hurting, the coffee tasted great, he didn't feel sick and to be honest, he had pleasurable company.

"How are you doing, Stiles?"

The nurse's face turned blank and for a second it looked as if somebody had punched him in the face.

"I'm okay."

Derek sensed that something was wrong but he didn't want to butt in. He’d rather just moved along, ignoring the fact that Stiles suddenly looked like a drowned cat but he couldn’t. With a beating heart he continued.

"You sure?"  
Stiles looked an awful lot like a drowned kitten to the point where it was nearly disturbing.

"Uh… Tomorrow it's ten years since my mother died."

Oh. Derek felt uncomfortable and he couldn't imagine what it must feel like to Stiles. So much for looking his fear in the eye and ask Stiles what was wrong. Feelings were crap and if it would've been any other person he probably would've ran away but this being Stiles and Stiles being sad, he stayed.

"I'm sorry," he simply said and after having looked at Stiles' hand for a while he let a shaky hand reach out to try comfort the other man.

Stiles' hand was cold and he felt really awkward doing it.

"I- It's okay, really. Tonight I'm going to catch a flight to Beacon Hills and it will probably be horrible. You know, all my friends live there and at the same time I want to hang out with them they'll just treat me like I'm going to break any second. And I'll stay with my dad whom will be so sad but he'll just pretend like it doesn't hurt. I just… It's hard to deal with."

Stiles took a breath and Derek tried not to tense when Stiles mentioned 'Beacon Hills'.

"Sorry for rambling."

 "It's okay."  
Derek looked at his thumb that had started moving in soothing circles over Stiles' skin.

"I know how you feel."  
Blood rushed to Derek's brain and made it hard to think.

*****

Derek was struggling with words and looked out of the window at the lively city.

"I know how you feel, Stiles. When I was fifteen years old both my parents and my sister died in a big fire near… Beacon Hills."

He stared out of the window and swallowed hard.

"It still hurts."

Stiles was left speechless. So Derek Hale was in fact the Derek Hale whose house had burnt in Beacon Hills after his mother had died. He didn’t know what to say or how to react because even if he’d known from day one that Derek was a sad person without a family, hearing it being said by him was heart breaking.

The table fell silent for a while.

"I don't know how to respond to that," he said after the silence had passed.

Derek shook his head and turned his eyes back to Stiles. There was an intense look upon his face.

"Sorry for making this conversation slide down the precipice." Stiles smiled languidly.

Suddenly he was very aware of the warm hand that was resting on his. Some sort of energy travelled through his hand and even if the smell of sorrow and loss still was thick in the air, Stiles felt light.

A second later Derek's hand was gone and reached for his coffee. He lifted the cup up to his lips where Stiles eyes did NOT get stuck and took a sip.

Derek made a face and swallowed.

"It's cold," he said.

Being the dysfunctional person he was, Stiles couldn't help but laugh.

"This is a mess." As usual his hands searched for his hair to comb through it.

Their conversation got going again after having ordered two fresh and hot coffees and soon the heart-breaking mood was replaced by a much more lighter setting. Stiles couldn't help but feel intrigued by the mysterious man in front of him.

"So you're going home this evening?"

Stiles shrugged and let his eyes linger on Derek's vividly light blue eyes.

"I guess."

*****

Time passed and way too soon Stiles had to leave. By then the coffee had been replaced by sandwiches that had been consumed and enjoyed to the fullest. Of course Stiles had ordered the most ridiculous one, stating that life was only delightful when taking risks in life to which Derek had laughed. _Risks_.

Either way Derek ended up in his home by four o'clock, happy and without any stressful thoughts. When he sat down by his big window, taking in the sight, he took out his phone only to see a new text message.

' _I bid you farewell, my dearest comatose patience._ '

He quickly responded;

' _dearest? does that mean that im_ _your favourite?_ '

Soon the phone lit up.

' _Do not tell the others, mr Hale!_ '

Derek smiled to himself

' _don't crash the plane!_ '

' _Will do my best._ '

Derek looked up and saw the skyline over the city he adored. He felt more at peace than he'd ever done in a very long time.

*****

For some reason, Stiles never had enjoyed plane rides. There was something about being way too many feet up in the air that wasn't pleasurable. Thus, his fists clenched the armrests to secure his life. Everyone knew that the secret to staying alive in a possible crash was holding onto the armrests, it was simple science.

Thank god for short flights, because an hour later Stiles stood with shaky legs on _real_ ground. Getting his luggage took another twenty minutes but then he could walk out of the airport. He saw his dad and being the kid he was, Stiles ran towards his dad and hugged him tightly.

After a short drive that consisted of Stiles babbling and his dad nodding fondly, they arrived to the house.

Stiles could've stood looking at his childhood home for an eternity, dwelling in nostalgia, but he was tired after the flight and his dad had actually cooked food. The whole food thing was something new, because Stiles could only remember a few times that his dad had actually prepared something big. He didn't comment upon the matter, instead he just gratefully ate of the supper while praising his father for eating his vegetables.

When he lay in his teenage bed, looking at the roof he'd watched so many times, he took up his phone. His fingers hesitated for a second before writing a simple text.

' _I didn't crash!!!!!! Guess you never expected that one._ '

Then he put the phone away and turned to his side to let the sleep take over his body.

Before he drifted to sleep he thought about the receiver of his text. Derek Hale, the grumpy and bitter death wishing moron.

Was he falling for the falling man? Ha-ha. Stiles nearly wished he had someone next to him to laugh at his lame jokes; it wasn't the same to laugh at yourself in an empty bed.


	7. To Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reading through this chapter I kept singing "let's Marvin Gaye and get it on...!" to myself. Kinda awkward if you haven't heard the song, but long story short; it's a reference to sex. Which, I'm sorry, won't really be happening in this fic because I'm like, super-very waaaay too awkward to ever be able to write a sex-scene. So that won't be happening in the near future. But the upcoming sad parts will hopefully scar you enough (ooops spoilers sorry xoxo). (Please don't hate me I've been told I'm a very lovable person)

_You're the one designed for me_  
_A distant stranger that I will complete_  
 _I know you're out there we're meant to be_  
 _So keep your head up and make it to me_

 **-Sam Smith, Make It To Me**

*********

Erica, Isaac and Boyd was semi-busy in his kitchen and him make his way up to them. Erica had been the one to shake him awake with laughter and harsh words while the two others had been standing a few feet away, shaking with laughter.

"Why did I even give any of you a key to my apartment?" Derek asked and tried to rub the fatigue away from his eyes.

"Because you obviously love us," Isaac said and flipped a pancake in the air with only a snap of his wrist.

A grin spread itself across Derek's face because no matter how hard he tried to act angry with them, he did love his little friend group. All of them were stuntmen working in the same company and dealing with the same directors. They had fought each other plenty of times on screen and even if they were a rather strange bunch of friends they enjoyed each others company.

Stressful backgrounds and hard lives were something they all shared but none of that mattered when they were together. When they were together they never had to feel like the weird kid whose mother/father/brother/sister had died. They rarely ever talked about their backgrounds though and not a single one of them knew about Kate but they knew that Derek had had a horrible relationship in his past. Nobody except for Derek knew about Kate.

"Only if you give me some of those pancakes," Derek responded and leaned on the counter, taking some weight off his left leg.

Boyd smiled at him.

"It really is great to see you."

The four of them smiled.

"Sooo, Derek, Erica told me about your hospital visit. About a certain nuuuurse..." Boyd wiggled his eyebrows in a suggestive way and Derek wondered what Erica had told them to not be angry with him. Because even if they kept the setting friendly, Derek knew that she'd told them something. He'd told them he went on a vacation and hadn't told them when he crashed and got placed in a hospital bed. She must've said something to get them to act all nice.

"Oh shut up, Boyd," Derek said and tried his hardest not to look like it affected him.

"I told you he liked that guy," Erica said and pointed toward Derek's slightly pink cheeks and Derek groaned and tried to ignore his friends.

When the three of them started chatting about Derek's pathetic love life Derek zoomed out and wondered why he'd never called his friends from the hospital. He knew that they were wondering but simply were too nice to actually ask him out loud.

"-and that one girl who Derek just brushed off after _one_ date! Because she said she disliked dogs!"

Derek groaned loudly and cringed.

"You've had your fun! Now, can we _please_ eat?"

The interruption made Boyd, Erica and Isaac turn around, still laughing.

"Or what?" Erica said playfully.

"Or I'll rip your throats out."

Isaac laughed lightly and placed the last pancake on a plate.

"I'm pretty sure I could outrun you, old man."

Derek looked down at his leg and agreed silently.

"Maybe I could just kick you with my leg. I mean, it's well protected."

Erica shook her head and took a plate of bacon to place at the table.

"Save the show for another day, Derek."

"I'll see this breakfast as your penance," he smiled, ignoring the fact that he was the one in need of penance.

Boyd took a pot of coffee and placed it next to the bacon. Soon Isaac's pancakes joined the food and Derek felt his stomach turn around when seeing and smelling the food.

They took their places around the table and soon they talked as they normally did; bickering mixed together with funny stories, work and day to day things.

Derek really appreciated their actions even if he didn't say it out loud. The whole thing told him that they weren't mad at him for not contacting them at the hospital and hearing them talk like usual made him calm and content. Actually, they seemed to think that he was the one in need of comfort and therefore seemed to be tip toeing around the elephant in the room. He might not have a family but he had friends that he happily would sacrifice himself for and at that moment he regretted thinking they didn't care about him a few weeks ago. The great thing about being friends with other people with struggling background was that they understood him. They knew when he was in need of space and when they should or shouldn't talk about something.

After a while of silence from Derek's part Erica turned around and looked him in the eyes, raising her brows in a question.

"I'm thinking," he said.

"About _Stiles_?"

"No," he said, because it was true.

"How did you even know that he's called that?" He then added.

"So you _were_ thinking about him?" Erica tilted her head and Derek shook his head.

"No."  
Isaac and Boyd had stopped talking and just watched them fondly.  
"Uh-huh," Boyd nodded with a "knowing" grin. What was that grin even about?

"Just like Erica and Boyd wasn't thinking about each other last year," Isaac said and referred to Boyd and Erica's relationship that took off previous year. Erica smacked Isaac on the head.

*****

So maybe he'd been exaggerating with his friends treating him weirdly. Yeah, he'd been a bit nervous when meeting them; it had been months since they'd last seen each other. Stiles had went over to Scott's apartment after he'd ate breakfast. The whole thing about mourning his mother had been pushed out of his mind for the time being. A dinner was planned to take place in the evening and Stiles wanted other things on his mind, so that was where the friends part came into picture.

" _Stiles_!" Stiles had turned around at the sound of his best friend calling out his name. He'd managed to turn around at the last second and then Scott just crashed into him and Stiles had felt like he was going to get crushed. For some reason he liked the human that had been trying to make crust of his bones.

"Scott! Air!" he'd gulped like a pathetic little kid being suffocated by its' father's hug.

Scott let go off him and smiled happily. The smile quickly turned back to a wide grin again and Stiles face responded with the same expression.

"Man, it's been forever!" He'd called out and ruffled Scott's hair.

After that encounter they'd went inside and there Stiles had found his best friends in Beacon Hills. If he was honest with himself there had been tears in the corner of his eyes when seeing all of his friends just sitting there, waiting for him. There was Lydia, Danny, Allison, Scott and... Jackson. Jackson wasn't really a friend, more of a frenemy but since he was Lydia's boyfriend Stiles was okay with him being there. Kind of just okay, but oh well.

They spent the day perfectly; chatting, catching up and eating. Everyone was doing well; Lydia was to graduate next semester, Danny had been in one long term relationship (the guy that usually only had flings), Allison and Scott had moved in together and Jackson seemed to be his usual asshole-self.

Everything felt so natural and Stiles realised just how much he'd missed them all (not including Jackson).

Life seemed to be the same as ever in Beacon Hills; Allison and Scott kept giving each other disgustingly sweet looks that would've made Stiles throw up if it were any other couple, Lydia bossed everyone around and Jackson was being a dick.

To leave Scott and Allison's apartment was something he found hard; to walk the short distance to his dad's house and take in the sad atmosphere caused by death and loss wasn't something he looked forward to but it had to be done. That's why he left after a while, promising that he'd go see them the next day before he took a plane home. They all wanted him to stay longer but he'd explained how much work he had in the city and that he'd return for the holidays.

When he walked home in the chilly evening he took out his phone and stared at the screen for a while before writing anything.

' _I just miss her, you know. How can it still be so hard?_ '

When there wasn't a reply a minute later he took out his phone again and added a new text.

' _Life isn't fair._ '

Three minutes later he got a reply.

' _i know_ '

Stiles stared at the two words for a while. He knew that somewhere Derek sat with his phone and thought about his parents. While he thought about an appropriate answer his phone buzzed again.

' _my friends surprised me today. sometimes friends can be family._ '

' _You have friends!?!?!?_ '

This time the reply was fast.

' _very funny, stiles._ '

Stiles had reached his father's house and for a while he lingered outside, not ready to open the door just quite yet.

' _In a way, my friends are also my family. Ohana_ _means family_ , _and family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten, you know_ '

' _did you just quote lilo and stitch?_ '

' _Did you just recognise a quote from lilo and stitch?_ '

' _shut up, stiles'_

' _Your secret is safe with me, comatose._ '

Stiles smiled, took a deep breath and opened the door to the house.

*****

Once again, Derek had a meeting with doctor Deaton and this time he wasn't "jumpy". This time he knew that Stiles wasn't in there and that made him calm but it also made the trip boring. Last time he'd kind of looked forward to seeing the nurse and this time he knew that he wouldn't be able to.

Much time hadn't passed since he'd visited the hospital last time and he wasn't sure why Deaton had called him in again. The check ups for a femur fracture was supposed to take place every six weeks.

Erica had helped him get there but when he had to limp into Deaton's office she'd stayed outside, stating that she could try to coffee machine to which Derek had made a face.

"Hello, Mr Derek Hale," Deaton smiled, stood up and offered his hand. Derek took it and shook it before sitting down in the chair in front of Deaton's desk.

Deaton himself sat down again and took out a pair of glasses.

"So, Derek, how are you feeling?"

He'd been thinking about his state during the car ride to the hospital and even if he'd been thinking very hard he had a hard time describing the feelings.

"Ehm.. My head seems fine, no more headaches, sickness or feelings of nausea. It's my leg that's the problem."

"Can you please explain further how your leg is feeling?"

Inwards, Derek sighted loudly.

"It's like... eh, it's like a big lump. I can walk and move pretty well and it doesn't hurt all that much. Then suddenly I'll get struck by pain." He took a pause to think about how it felt with the leg. "Most of the time it's not that bad."

Deaton looked up from his papers that he'd been scribbling nonsense on and really _looked_ at Derek.

"Derek... I'll just go straight to the point."

The glasses that had been on Deaton's nose was then gentle pushed up and placed on the table.

"I have no idea what you've done with that leg of yours because you shouldn't be able to move around as much as you seem to be doing. The x-ray of your fracture last time you were here... I've never seen anything like it. I can't say that it's healed but it's not that far away from it."

Deaton had looked intensely at him but then let go and looked down at his papers again.

"It's extraordinary, really. One and a half month and it looks like it has been the double." Deaton rubbed his eyes and looked tired.

"So, this was just me telling you to keep doing whatever you're doing because it seems to be working. Move around, walk.. Don't run but keep it moving, okay?"

Derek looked at the doctor. He had been aware that his leg didn't feel that bad but he'd never understood that he'd been something "extraordinary". There were no words on his mind so he didn't say anything.

"That was actually everything I had to say." Deaton smiled.

"I trust you know the way out. See you later, Derek. Take care."

And with that, Deaton just stopped looking at him and just returned to his messy desk. Derek felt out of place, wondered if he was supposed to say anything and then just walked out of the office.

Erica was sitting outside and looked surprised when he walked out.

"You were in there for four minutes," she said and he shrugged.

He told her about the strange meeting while they walked to the car. Well, she was walking and he was kind-of walking.

When they sat down in the car Derek took out his phone and let his thumbs dance.

' _deaton_ _thinks im_ _extraordinary_ '

Erica gave him an interested look when his phone buzzed.

' _Love is in the air..!_ '

*****

When Stiles sat in the plane on his way back home he was tired. He'd thought that he'd be exhausted and sad but he actually felt a warm and happy tiredness, only stained with the fact that _he was sitting in a plane_. Plane rides were horrendous.

His three days in his home town had given him nothing but good feelings, even the evening with his dad at the anniversary of his mother's death had been somewhat painless. Sure it had hurt like a bitch but his father had taken it all with a pinch of salt and had acted relaxed. They hadn't drowned in sorrow, instead his father had given him a glass of wine and then they had been sitting under the dim light by the table and eaten a chicken stew that Stiles' mother had loved. They had talked about fond memories and tears that spoke of loss had made their way down their cheeks as the night arrived. A bittersweet smell had been travelling through the air and it rubbed off on them. Yes, they may have cried together but they had also felt light. It was refreshing to be able to let go of the tears and they had laughed and felt joy as they spoke of their beloved one.

So Stiles didn't feel as horrible as he'd thought. No, life felt good even when the plane took off and his body tensed.

*****

Only two days after Stiles had arrived to the city again Derek and him had decided to meet up, this time at Derek's place. The agreement seemed to be that Derek would "finally" see the first episode of Supernatural under Stiles' supervision. The show was not Derek's source of excitement but he could pretend, if it made Stiles happy. Yes, Derek was well aware of how sappy he'd become but when it came to the nurse but he didn't seem to care anymore. Some time during their late night texting a wall had broke and at the moment he was currently staring at the time on his phone. He knew that Stiles probably would be late, he'd been warned that time didn't really exist in the hospital world but he was still rather nervous. Erica had teased him about it (why had he even told her?) and asked him about his "date" a humongous amount of times. It was bad when Derek stopped grunting that "it's not a date" and instead just ignored her. After a while she'd actually become silent and just said that she actually was happy for him. His insides had nearly melted but then she'd asked again and he'd thrown a pillow at her face to make her shut up.

Derek tapped his finger against the kitchen counter that he was currently leaning on. If he'd been a magician he'd turn up the speed of time because counting seconds didn't seem to be doing the trick.

Just as he sighted and was about to sit down he heard a knock on the door. Derek stood up and walked towards the door, probably looking pretty tense.

*****

 _Again_ , he'd been held in the hospital for too long. It was fine some days but it was no fun whatsoever when he had plans to watch Supernatural with his too-hot-of-a-person friend. So, when he'd finally been able to rush out of the hospital he'd just gone straight to Derek's apartment, fully dressed in his work clothes that probably smelled like hospital and sweat. Ugh.

And there he stood, knocking at the door that opened after only one knock. He felt surprised for a second but recovered quickly upon seeing Derek's stressed face.

"Sorry for being so late, the patients were crazy today and Deaton was an ass about not letting me go. I mean, how can the guy even keep up with himself sometimes? He's a good person and all but some days I just-"

"Stiles."

Stiles shut his mouth, aware of his brain just going off again.

"Sorry, I'm tired."

Derek moved out of the doorframe and didn't look as tense anymore. Stiles moved to the insides of the apartment and looked around. It looked as he remembered it but...  
"Do I smell popcorn?"

Derek smiled.

"Yes."

Only twenty minutes later they sat in the couch with a bowl of popcorn and started watching the first episode.

"Oh man, you'll love this!" Stiles exclaimed, feeling happy and excited to show one of his favourite shows to his friend. And if the popcorn was an excuse to both sit and lean closer to Derek, he didn't mind. Being in the dark haired man's space was something he enjoyed far too much.

"Why all the salt and burning?" Derek asked after the first episode.

"Don't you dare get tired of good ol' salt and burn after one episode, Derek Hale!"

They continued.

*****

To be honest, the show wasn't too bad. The pilot hadn't been outstanding but then again, they rarely were. So, season one continued and Derek enjoyed himself. At least he tried, but it was rather hard when Stiles was sitting so close to him.

Somewhere along the fifth episode Stiles fell asleep. At first, Derek didn't notice, too focused on the current hunt but once Stiles breath turned even and light he turned his gaze towards the nurse that was leaning on his shoulder. Stiles had looked so peaceful and Derek didn't have the heart to move him so he just let him rest there. The warmth of his head was welcome and Derek felt himself lean into the soft body. Sam and Dean Winchester on the screen could wait, so he just turned off the episode. For a while he just sat there and listened to the steady breathing of Stiles. He wondered if he was being creepy or if it was normal to be doing what he was doing.

Either way, he couldn't move or wake Stiles up so when he'd carefully and unwillingly removed himself to make his friend more comfortable. After having looked at Stiles for a while he took a blanket and spread over him, making sure he was keeping warm.

When it all was finished he didn't know what to do with himself. He felt restless and even if he knew that he should've gone to sleep he simply couldn't. Only after a shower and an hour later he laid in his bed, concentrating hard to hear the breath of Stiles.

*****

He woke up ruthless. What time was it and when did his shift start? It was only when the light of a window struck him that he realised that he was not, in fact, at home. Somehow he'd ended up on Derek's couch.

On the table in front of him he found his phone and checked the time. Thankfully, it told him that he didn't have to hurry; his shift started at one o'clock and the screen told him that the time only was nine. He sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. It was a quick procedure since it was rather hard not being very awake when he had been sleeping on _Derek's_ couch with _Derek's_ blanket dropped around him in _Derek's_ apartment. Yeah, it was strange. Also; strangely awesome.

Stiles rose to his feet, wondering if it would be appropriate to make breakfast. Since he was bad at deciding what was appropriate and what wasn't, he decided to go with it. Opening the refrigerator of someone else was always interesting and Stiles couldn't help but make big eyes when he found that Derek's fridge was filled with all sorts of foods and ingredients.

It took him a second to find the eggs and to bring them out. Then the great search for a pan started and took a good five minutes. Stiles didn't know who needed shelves upon shelves with kitchen gadgets but apparently Derek did.

After finding the pan it all went smoothly and when he flipped the second omelette he could see a newly awoken Derek watching him with a drowsy look and ruffled hair. Even if Stiles sometimes found it hard to know what was appropriate he sure as hell knew that Derek was not being appropriate at the time being. And Stiles knew that it was not appropriate to stare at Derek the way he did so he quickly turned his eyes back to his breakfast-making.

"Good morning, sleepy," he greeted Derek who just grunted something and disappeared into the bath room.

Two minutes later he turned up again and looked far more presentable.

"I need caffeine," he said with a husky voice.

"Mmhmm," Stiles said and pointed towards the pot he'd just put down on the table in front of him.

Derek sat down by the table.

"Thank for not kicking me out last night. You could've just shook me and told me to get the fuck out, you know," Stiles said playfully.

Derek just watched him and took a sip of coffee before answering.

"That wouldn't have been nice."

Stiles raised a brow.

"You slept like a baby, Stiles."

Derek already seemed to be more awake after two mouths of the strongly-brewed coffee.

Stiles watched him for moment and then took his plate with an omelette and started eating because he was very, very hungry and arguing about Derek's niceness was a conversation he could save for later.

"This is good," he said after a few bites, excited over the fact that he'd not failed at making omelettes.

Derek nodded in agreement.

"I didn't think you'd know how to use a frying pan."

"Well, I'm full of surprises, what can I say?"

Derek shook his head and continued eating.

"So what did you think of supernatural?" Stiles asked after a while, not able to hold himself for any longer.

Derek shrugged with a small smile.

"I don't know. The current plot is lacking but then again I usually have a hard time getting into shows."

Stiles nodded.

"Yeah, it took a while for me to actually get into the show. But once you get into it, it's awesome!" He smiled widely and then drank some more coffee.

"Lyckily you have nine more seasons to get into it!"

Derek made a face but didn't seem too sad about it.

A phone that Stiles didn't recognise as his own buzzed and Derek picked up a phone. He read something on the screen and that sure did wake up Stiles' curiosity.

"Huh," he said and that didn't do anything to soothe his questions.

"What is it?" he asked and Derek huffed something.

"It's Erica," he then said.

"Can I…?" Derek looked up and Stiles pointed towards the phone. Yeah, he was being a kid but he was curious.

Derek seemed to hesitate for a second but then he shrugged.

"Why not?"

Stiles stood up and walked around the table to stand behind Derek. The realisation that it was a very bad idea came far too soon. He didn't back up because it would look strange so there he stood in Derek's space, leaning over the other man to read the text.  
Some sort of energy was buzzing between them and Stiles really had a hard time ignoring it.

' _did u enjoy ur supernatural date???? ;);)_ '

Stiles stood still for a while, still in Derek's space.

"Did you?" Stiles asked and turned his head slightly, not realising how close they were.

Derek was looking at him and then at his lips. Stiles heart jolted and then it all happened both fast and slow. They locked eyes and slowly, while looking into each other's eyes their lips met. It started off sweet and soft. Derek's lips were soft and Stiles couldn't help but scream inside his head. ' _HOLY SHIT, I'm kissing Derek Hale!!!!_ '

But when his hands grasped Derek's hair and Derek let his hands run over Stiles back it quickly turned into a hot mess. Derek's hands left hot trails and Stiles kept stroking Derek's soft and feather-like hair.

When they finally had to part to catch some air, Derek looked him in the eyes and huffed. Maybe it was a laugh, Stiles was not sure.

"I did," he said with a stupid smile on his face.

Stiles couldn't hide his big grin that was spread across his face, probably making him look like a happy dog, but whatever.

"I did enjoy it too, thank you very much for asking."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so feel free to leave a comment. Or pressured, you decide. It's just that I get insecure about kudos. I keep wondering if they are pity-kudos (is that a thing???), if you truly like it, if you don't have the time to actually leave a proper comment or if you're just shy. Because, hell, a simple "nice" or even "okay" would help me out! I'm in need of your thoughts! And please, BE HONEST. I JUST NEED FEEDBACK!!!!!!


	8. My Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this is probably my favourite chapter because IT IS SO FLUFFY I'M GONNA DIE!!!! Also, wolf-puns (yes, I was laughing very hard while writing them. Shut up.).  
> ALSO, OVER A THOUSAND OF PEOPLE HAVE CLICKED ON THIS STORY ISN'T THAT MENTAL?!

_And this is the world as I see it now._  
_Turns out that nothing is fair._  
_You can leave me if you wish, my love._  
_But I'm not going anywhere._

**-Keaton Henson, 10am Gare du Nord**

*******

The staff at the hospital did notice something being different about him. No matter how hard he tried he couldn't wipe that stupid grin off of his face and his mood was breaking through the ceiling.

Most of them seemed to be thinking that his weekend had done him good and Jennifer had told him that happiness was a good on him. That statement had made Stiles stop and think. Was he happy now? Yes. But hadn't he been happy before? Jennifer's comment made Stiles question his "yes".

Either way, the day wasn't a day for frowns and tough life questions, no, it was a day for celebration since he had kissed Derek Hale and said person had kissed him right back. And enjoyed it.

Yes, Stiles was feeling glorious and all day at work he acted like a total sweetheart because, well, he was.

It took all his willpower and the knowledge of him having work the next day to actually get himself to drive to his own apartment when he got off his shift. He'd texted Derek and thanked him for everything, especially the kiss(es) and he'd gotten a response telling him that he didn't need to thank Derek for them. And yes, Stiles _had_ been considering not to send the text for a long time since it was rather risky. Because, contrary to popular belief, Stiles was a person who thought about what he said and wrote. But he'd needed to send that text because he was slightly worried that if he hadn't what happened could've been swept under some doormat only because both himself and Derek could tend to be rather... awkward towards feelings.

Driving home at midnight through a still lively city, seeing the lights and people walking by calmed him down and even if his spirit still was high, he started to feel how tired he was. The long day was starting to wear him down and damn was it tiring to be so happy! How did other people do it?

Stiles drove his blue jeep down the street, turned left three times and then right one time before speeding up. Ten minutes later he arrived to his apartment buildings. They were tall, big and looked horribly sad. This day, he didn't really care and just ran up the four stairs to his floor.

The door was quick to unlock and then he stood in the threshold, taking in the sight of his small apartment that mostly just contained his bed, a minimalistic kitchen, a bookcase crammed with books, a bathroom, some drawers, clothes and his beloved computer. Stiles removed his shoes and after a second, his work clothes. Shedding the clothes that smelled too much of hospital was always nice and made him feel less formal.

Letting himself drop down on the bed was nice too.

His phone buzzed and he quickly got it up.

" _we should do it again, you know_."

Stiles smiled, felt his heart beating and wrote a reply.

" _YES!!!_ "

*****

The next couple of days were testing for Derek Hale. His patience was really put to test when he had to pretend not to be dying to see Stiles. The nurse seemed to be working harder than any other nurse at the hospital and for the hundreds of time, Derek wondered why he still only was a nurse. Not that being a nurse was bad; but he was so talented and seemed to be a brainchild.  
When Derek found himself thinking thoughts like that, he smiled and then wondered what the hell was wrong with him because it felt strange. It was a clear warning sign when caring for someone felt strange, he knew so much. He'd known some part of him still was shredded since his family had died and of course he'd had crushes on people but he'd never really acted on them, not after that one time…

And when he got the time to actually think and be away from Stiles, he was so horribly close to run away from it all. Derek was scared; he was scared of being hurt again, he was scared of his own feelings and he was scared of the future. Kate, whom had used to been keeping out of his brain, had started popping in there whenever his fear of his own feelings started creeping up on him. But Derek kept ignoring them, kept telling himself that he wanted this, because he did. He wanted it so bad and that was the reason for his fear. To want someone so bad was scary but it also gave him a tingly feeling. Yes, _tingly_.

Well, either way, it was a horrible test that Derek did not appreciate. Instead, Erica had to put up with him growling at her over the phone one afternoon because not only did the whole thing about not being able to see Stiles after they kissed and Stiles _liked_ him stress him out, but not being able to move around like a normal human being also did a few things to him. Like, turn him into some sort of mad caveman whose only interest seemed to be to TV and not be productive. At all.

Derek didn't like the huge amount of time he'd gotten. Some people would've used it to think but naturally, Derek jumped at that kind of thing. Thoughts were scary things that too often than not lead to sad and uncomfortable things. Derek wished that he still would've been able to jump from planes or to run around at night because living this "normal" life was really making him mad. But, to break the doctor's strict order didn't seem right, so it was easier to just ignore those thoughts and get dragged into some show on TV. Preferably, Supernatural. Yes, Derek had let himself get dragged into the ridiculous show that Stiles had shown him. Erica was too excited about the fact that Derek was watching her favourite show to tease him about it. Well, at least as much as she would've done with any other show.

And then, after some days of his sad binge-watching, he got a text telling him in a mysterious way to ' _be ready in 15min ;)_ '. For a while he just stared blankly at the screen, trying to understand the message. When his mind cleared he turned off the TV and hurried up. A shower of three minutes, shaving, throwing on some kind of acceptable clothes later his leg hurt and his mind was buzzing with nerves and anticipation.

*****

Stiles took the last step towards the door. As he knocked the door he wondered if Derek had gotten his text or if he even was home. If not, that would be totally embarrassing.

As the door opened he felt his heart starting beating way too fast and thought started run through his mind. What if it would be awkward? What if Derek didn't like him?

Before he started running away, Derek opened the door and stood in the threshold. The tenseness in his body went away when he saw Derek's wide grin and a big smile was plastered to Stiles' face as he let his body act as it wanted and pull the big man into a hug. It was a friendly I-missed-you and I-kind-of-like-you and also this-isn't-awkward-right? kind of hug.

Derek smelled of cologne and his hair was damp. God, if that didn't make him feel flushed.

Stiles let go after an appropriate amount of time and smiled even wider, if that was possible.

"It's nice to see you, buddy."

Derek just nodded and responded with a smile.

"You too, _buddy_." Stiles made a face.

"That word isn't a good fit for you."

"I know," Derek responded and lingered awkwardly in the doorframe for a while.

"Are we going somewhere?" he then said.

"Right, right," Stiles said when remembering that they were actually going somewhere. Just the plain sight of Derek turned his already messy brain into mush. He then proceeded to turn around but then stopping again the second after.

"You coming?"

Derek smiled, stepped out of the door and locked it after having snatched a jacket. Leather, Stiles noted. Of course Derek Hale was going for the whole too-cool-for-everything look. But then again, it was clearly working for him because the guy was seriously top model- material. Stiles stopped staring at Derek's body because it wasn't healthy to take all that perfection in.

"Where are we going?" Derek asked as they walked down the stairs.

Stiles' mouth opened but then he closed it with a content expression on his face.

"You know what? I'm not going to tell you."

Derek rolled his eyes and hid a smile.

"You know what? Scratch what I said earlier, it's not nice to see you again."

Stiles laughed loudly.

"Oh, you love it, Derek Hale."

*****

One hour later, Derek Hale had to admit to actually loving it. Stiles being Stiles, he'd brought him out to one of the weirdest yet strangely popular and cosy restaurant in the city; The Pack. It was a wolf-themed restaurant (really, Stiles?) and all the dishes was called names containing only bad wolf and/or dog puns.

Stiles had a blast hearing Derek order. Saying "I'd like to have the 'bone appetit with howl-wheat pasta" with a straight face really was… something. Though, he had to admit that the food was great and that the laughs of a certain nurse was worth saying all the embarrassing names.

"So, Derek… Fancy a desert?" Stiles smirked, holding up the menu too close to Derek's face.

Derek glared back.

"Well, what would you propose, mister Stilinski?"

Stiles cringed upon hearing his last name.

"Dude, don't call me that!"

Derek smiled and shoved the desert-menu back into Stiles' face.

Stiles scanned the page for a while.

"Well, doesn't the 'paw-some pannacota served in a bowl of chocolate' sound good to you?"

"It sounds silly to me."

"Then maybe you should get the 'woofles with st-raw-berries' then."

Derek rolled his eyes, trying to hide what that smile did to him.

In the end, they ordered both said desert and to be honest, the "paw-some Pannacotta served in a bowl of chocolate" lived up to its name. The butterflies that had moved into his stomach had been quite calm during the dinner, mostly thanks to Stiles incredible ability to talk about both absolutely nothing and everything in the same sentence even if his mouth was a bit distracting. But, when they were starting to feel finished and Stiles asked for the bill they made themselves known again because, he was on a _date with Stiles_ and if that wasn't enough to make somebody feel nervous he wasn't sure what was wrong with them.

Stiles paid because it was "his idea" and he said that Derek could pay "the next time" which implied that there would be a next time.

"Soooo…" Stiles said as they were moving to fetch their jackets, Derek trying his best not to limp.

"Soooo…" Derek echoed.

*****

"Guess who had a great time tonight!" Stiles said, unable to think about something that was less childish and more mature.

"Me," Derek replied and caught Stiles off guard with a genuine face and smile that made Stiles want to do some sort of weird dance of joy. Yes, Stiles Stilinski, the king of uncoordinated arms and legs wanted to dance of joy. It wouldn't have been pretty.

They were standing in the hall of the restaurant and their jackets was only footsteps away. Stiles could've reached for his jacket but instead his hand had different thoughts because it did not reach for his jacket, but for Derek's chin. He stroked the stubble lightly and felt Derek's intense eyes on his face. And then he just reached out with his whole body and screw it if it was horribly wrong to kiss someone in a restaurant because it was happening.

The kiss was only chaste and light but made Stiles smile. He smiled into Derek's lips and he felt the other man's lips doing the same. Something inside of him wanted to laugh of joy, maybe do that horrible dance (but he didn't). When parted, he just reached for his jacket, tried to be casual and not show that he was actually shaking, because holy fuck was that hot and promised a lot more. People had died in front of his eyes without him flinching and this was what made him _shake_.

They made it out of the restaurant and then Stiles felt himself being gently pressed up against the wall.

"You can't just do that to somebody." Derek's mouth was next to his ear and his voice had a playful tone. Stiles was ecstatic.

"What?" Stiles asked, a small kick of adrenaline rushing through his body.

"Kiss them and then just walk out."

In loss for words Stiles just kissed Derek.

It was wonderful to make out in a street corner even if it was a mess. And Stiles had to revaluate because he'd never liked messes but this particular mess was something he could very much live with.

*****

And air, what was air worth when Derek was currently in a car next to Stiles, watching him drive along the streets he seemed to know as the back of his own hand. As usual, his mouth was going, talking, about something that made Derek smile and Stiles smile because Derek was smiling. Their current situation was something they didn't really talk about because it had just kind of happened. Both of them seemed to have a hard time talking about feelings and even if they tried their best not to tip toe around each other they kind of did that instead of asking questions. Instead of "hey, can I kiss you?" they just looked at each other with confused faces until somebody took the first step and when Stiles wanted to go on a second date he kind of just went on talking for five minutes about how they didn't have to if Derek didn't want to, and that he might of read all the signals wrong because, apparently he thought he was socially handicapped, unable to pick up hints. Derek had been forced to just interrupt Stiles, who'd been drowning in his own words, to say yes. Stiles had sounded very relieved and thanked him before going on about how some weirdo had tried to spit on him previous day.

One week had passed since their first date and it was one of the most confusing, happy and migraine-causing week of Derek's life. In Stiles' word, it was just plain "awesome". It was confusing not to know if they were "together" (especially when having nosy friends around) or when they were going to see each other soon. Relationships were way too foreign to Derek, thanks to some old flings that had broken him. That sort of thing also held him back and even if he didn't want to, he felt weird.

"Okay, so you do remember when I told you about Mrs Johnson, right?"

"Of course."

Stiles just threw him a glance telling him that 'no, you're really bad at remembering stuff' but went on talking either way. For the record Derek did in fact remember Mrs Johnson because contrary to popular beliefs his head was functioning fine.

"Yesterday she told me that she used to be a lawyer. Y'know, like one of those really bad ass one that makes tons of money and that she one time helped this man accused of five very cold murders to not get electrocuted because they'd found the wrong guy. Isn't that awesome? I never really expected that from her."

Derek loved when Stiles went into story-telling mode. With eyes that were loosely watching the road and yet at the same time watching him, Stiles managed to not crash and also tell more of Mrs Johnson's story. The whole thing was very impressing.

Derek just nodded and hummed to the story, trying not to worry about Stiles' driving. Yes, Derek might be some sort of lover of danger but this sort of danger was very stupid.

"Derek!"  
"Huh?" Derek turned his attention back to Stiles.

"My driving's fine."

Derek just watched Stiles' face for a while, searching for some sort of irony that more often than not was hiding beneath the surface.

"You actually believe that, don't you?" He said with his eyebrows raised while keeping an eye on the road for Stiles.

"I haven't crashed!"

"You forgot a 'yet'. You haven't crashed _yet_."

"Details, Derek, _details_." Stiles turned around to face him.

"Eyes on the road, Stiles!" Derek called out and Stiles actually did as he was told.

"Yeah, just hate on me for not being the best driver in the world!" Stiles said with fake disappointment.

"I'm actually kind of impressed by your horrible driving. How did you even pass the test?"

Stiles actually laughed to that. Derek did so not get the guy or why he liked him so much.

"Well, that's a whole other story. I knew the guy who were supposed to grade me and let's just say he really loved me." Stiles battered his eyelashes and turned to Derek again.

"And by loved, I of course mean that he hated me so much that he let me pass just so he could get rid of me."

Derek felt torn between wanting Stiles to turn around to the road again because there were cars everywhere and between wanting to cup his face and kiss him.

"There are cars everywhere!" He said instead and pushed the latter thoughts out of his mind.

"Always such a killer of joy."  
"Mm-hmm," Derek hummed.

*****

"Stiles?"

"Hi dad," he said and got a relieved sigh back.

"You had me worried there, son. I thought we said yesterday." His dad's voice sounded a bit scolding but the relief from finding his son alive or whatever seemed to be bigger.

"We did and I'm sorry I forgot about you. I'm very, very, very sorry actually and I really hope that you're okay with it."

"It's fine, Stiles. Just... Next time, can you at least text me or something?"  
Now it was Stiles' turn to feel relieved.

"Yes, okay, of course, I can very much do that!" he nodded.

The line went quiet for a while.

"So, what were you up to yesterday that was more important than calling your only father?"  
"Dad, I'm sooo sorr-"

"It's fine. I was kidding, calm down, Stiles." His dad sounded worried again and Stiles got why, he really did. Stiles was not his usual happy self, or at least he was too stiff and too quick to jump to conclusion.

"I am calm," he tried and his dad seemed to smile.

"Yeah, I can hear that." Pause.  
"So what _did_ you actually do?" Shit, of course the nosy characteristic of Stiles was given to him by his father.

"Uhm... Do you remember that man who jumped out of a plane to skydive in a very dangerous way?" Stiles felt a glare resting on his face when mentioning Derek's name. He tensed slightly, because there could be a pillow following that glare.

"Derek?" His dad sounded confused. Stiles looked over to Derek who wasn't holding a pillow to throw at him and Stiles grinned towards Derek.

"Yes, that one. So, uhm, yeah, we're kind of dating?"

And again, there was a pause.

"I'm- Are you happy?" Derek looked him in the eyes.

"Yes," Stiles smiled.

"Is he there now?"

"No?" He could at least try.  
"Stiles, give him the phone."

Stiles took the phone and held it towards Derek, who seemed thrown off. Then he reached out for the phone and Stiles grinned. He felt a bit bad for Derek, but then again it was awesome seeing his dad grilling him like the sheriff he was.

Some hums, nods, 'yes, Mr Stilins- John' and 'yes, Stiles is annoying but I like him' escaped Derek. Then, Stiles had the phone in his hand once again.  
"He seems good. Don't let him hurt you."

"I won't dad."  
"I'll leave you two now. Bye, Stiles. I love you."

Stiles said his goodbyes and then he stood face to face with his... boyfriend? Were they boyfriends after a week containing two dates? What even was a relationship this early on? It was stressful.

"So you like me?" Stiles teased.

Derek looked like he had a sarcastic answer but seemed to scratch that and only wrapped his arms around Stiles' body without answering the question.

"I like you too, comatose."  
"You've _got_ to stop calling me that," Derek mumbled.

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't tell me you didn't like my wolf-puns. They were punny (ha ha ha I suck so bad).


	9. I Really Love You So

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another nice chapter :) Only two left after this one! And that feels rather sad, actually.

_I've been waiting here for hours_  
 _Yeah, I really love you so_  
 _This has turned into disaster lately_  
 _We're the only ones who know_  
**-Awolnation, Lie Love Live Love**  
*******

Derek was laughing. But the sound coming from his lips both sounded and felt strangled to his own ears and judging by the on Isaac's face, it sounded that way to him as well. Quickly, Derek shut his mouth and let the laugh die in the silent apartment of Isaac's. He felt something press up on him and the silence made him nervous.

Part of him regretted ever going there because he felt unstable. Not unstable as in he wanted to die, but unstable as in he wanted to run around for five hours and then sleep for twelve days. The reason he'd went to Isaac was that he'd felt alone. Over the course of the last few weeks he'd learnt that it was hard just being at home without going slightly insane. Derek wanted to walk the face of the earth again and defy the laws of gravity. Fall through air, run with a beating heart until his lungs were desperately screaming for air, lift something heavy until his mind was a haze and his muscles were aching. He did not want to wake up at noon as a doughy sack of bones, drink coffee and watch TV for a whole day. Derek felt cut out of society and his own life. As usual, he sought excitement and being all alone at home didn't get him anything close to that. Most of all he longed for the feeling of being on set, fighting some actor or jumping over a cliff with a car.

So, he'd went over to Isaac's apartment, knowing that his friend was at home. At first, he'd thought about going to Stiles but Derek knew that he was at work. Also, Derek didn't want to seem unstable in front of him. What they had seemed so new and Derek was oh so very scared of fucking it up.

"Derek, what's up?" Isaac said with a concerned face that Derek really wanted to run away from, only he couldn't.

"Nothing," Derek said with a voice that no longer contained any of the laughter from just a few seconds ago.

"Come on, man, don't leave me hanging!" Isaac said as Derek faced the window. Isaac then sat down next to Derek on the couch, making him uncomfortable and wanting to, once again, run away.

"Talk to me," Isaac said and for a second Derek could see Isaac's face in his mind when Isaac had told him about his father. His abusive father that had hit him since the day he turned eight and punished him by locking him in an old freezer. Derek felt a shiver go through his body and decided that his current problems were so petty that he could tell his friend.

"Is it Stiles?" Isaac tried again and Derek shook his head that no longer hurt.

"It's everything else," he said and Isaac waited on him, knew him well enough to know that he wasn't finished and that he needed to think about words for a while before he could go on.

"I feel so restless," he said, "and I can't do shit with this leg. I'm used to moving, running and getting rushes; you know how it is."

Isaac nodded but kept quiet. Derek felt shitty for feeling so bad over so small things and his thoughts went once again to Isaac's face that horrible day when he'd gotten to know Isaac's secret. Isaac did not yet know Derek's secret. Nobody did.

"I hate sitting inside all day long, I wasn't made for that kind of life. The doctor told me that I'm a fast healer but that I still shouldn't run or train."

Isaac sat quiet for a while, thinking.

"I get what you mean."

Derek actually felt lighter and if he wouldn't be so very bad at talking he probably would've thanked his friend. Instead, he knew that Isaac knew that he appreciated it.

"But maybe you could just work out without using your leg? Shouldn't you be able to just use your stomach, arms and whatever?"

"Huh." That might work, actually.

"I should talk to the doctor. That should work, you know."

Isaac smiled at him and Derek gave a small one back.

"And you know what, Derek? Don't worry about fucking up, okay? If he runs away because you are human, he isn't worth it."

Derek was in a loss of words; he had no clue how to reply. Words obviously wasn't his forte.

"I appreciate it," he said under his breath.

"I know you do," Isaac smiled and stood up.

"Tea?"

Derek shook his head and sighted.

"No coffee around?"

"Cofee's not good for you, Derek."

"I know."

"So don't drink it!"

*****

"Yes, yes, _yes_ , I know, _Scott_ , I know." Stiles sighted, sat down and rubbed his temples with his free hand.

"Scott, calm down, okay? Listen to me," he said and tried to sound as reassuring as possible.

"Yes, Scott, we're still best friends and we always will be, okay, buddy?"

Scott took a breath on the other side of the line and before he started letting his mouth go again Stiles started talking again.

"No, I didn't hide it from you deliberately, it just kind of never seemed like a good time to tell you that 'hey, did I ever tell you about a man that was in the hospital that fell from the sky and hit his head very hard? Yeah, I'm kind of dating him! Also, I saved him from dying!'. Okay, it just never felt like the right time!"

The line went quiet.

"Well, it sounds awful when you say it like that."

"I know."

"That's why you never told me? Because it sounded bad?"

"I know." Ugh, this headache was never leaving him.

"So we're still friends, right?"

"Yes, Scott, we're still the bestest of friends even if we rarely see each other, okay? You're my best buddy and you always will be."

"Even if you tend to overreact at certain things," he then added after a moment.

"I don't," Scott said and sounded like a sad puppy. Stiles even knew that Scott was making puppy eyes on the other end of the line.

"Oh, yes you do, come on! You're so making puppy eyes at this instant!"

"I'm not."

There was a small laugh that escaped Stiles' lips even if his head still was pounding, Stiles smiled.

"Shut up," Scott said but on the other side of the line and then laughed.

"We should talk more often, you know. And not about these kind of horribly stressing things where you ask me if we're not friends anymore."

"Yes, we should."

"I miss you, Stiles."

"I miss you too, buddy. So very much." Scott had no idea how weird it was to live in a foreign city where you knew nobody and your friends you'd known your whole life was nowhere close to your apartment.

"I'm sorry, Stiles, but I really badly need to go now. I'll call you!"

Stiles said goodbye and then let the phone hang from his hand for a while. He rubbed his face and then turned it straight forward to face another person.

"You need to stop being here when I get random phone calls from people asking me about my current dating status."

"Are there any calls left to get?" Derek asked and a small smile played on his lips. He looked so relaxed in Stiles' shitty apartment that he'd tried so hard to get to look non-shitty and failed horribly. They had been dating for three weeks now and Stiles felt happy. Even if he felt even more tired mentally than ever, Derek made him smile and things were _good_.

"Well, my cousin Miguel from Hawaii haven't called yet."

"Then call him and tell him about the falling man!"

"Oh, come on, don't you dare get me to feel bad for that!"

Derek raised an eyebrow and Stiles got up and moved over to his bed where Derek was sitting. Stiles let his head fall into the natural curve of Derek's neck and for a while they just sat like that. Breathing in Derek's scent made him calmer and for a while he forgot that he had work in the morning.

"So what have you been doing today?" Stiles asked quietly after a moment of silence.

"Nothing."

Stiles moved his head so that he could watch Derek's face.

"Come on, something must've happened."

"I met up with Isaac this morning."

Something small changed in Derek's face for a split second and then it was hidden again.

"Tell me?" he asked plainly, forgetting how Derek was shit at talking.

*****

Derek felt himself tense and tried to force his body to relax again. He knew that Stiles would notice him tensing and therefore kept his breath even and steady.

"About what?" he said.

"Derek, come on. What is it?" Derek wanted nothing more than to shut his mouth and not say anything but he knew that by doing that he would hurt Stiles and end up with more problems than before.

Stiles sat up straight and turned Derek around so that they were facing each other. He then continued by touching Derek's face lightly.

"You got to stop thinking that I'll run away if you tell me something personal." Stiles didn't sound angry. He was talking slowly and his eyes were tender and glowed. It was as if he was talking to a child.

Derek dodged Stiles' eyes and looked down on the bed as a small laugh escaped his mouth.

"Isaac said that." He felt like shit and tensed again. Feeling weak was a horrible feeling that he wanted to get rid off.

"Well, then Isaac's a clever guy, cause I ain't going nowhere. Hell, I'll probably be the one to fuck something up!"

At that moment, he could've spilled the beans. Just dropped everything right there and told Stiles everything about Kate. How she'd manipulated him when he was just a teenager but he couldn't. So he kept his mouth shut and ignored the thoughts.  
Derek turned his eyes back to Stiles' face and a small smile was back on his lips when Stiles smiled. Stiles looked him in the eyes for a while and then leant in to kiss him.

"Stay the night?"

Derek didn't need to think about that.

"Yes."

Stiles tugged at his hair and laughed.

"Good. I'll probably wake you up at five o'clock in the morning though, so be ready for that. Or don't! Oh, the fun and mysteries of never knowing when you'll be brutally awoken!"

For the hundreds of time, Derek wondered why he liked the lunatic.

"You are twelve, Stiles."

"Well, you're like fifty. And a fifty year old that's into twelve year olds is kind of creepy."

Derek pushed Stiles.  
"Shut up."

*****

Stiles woke up two minutes before his phone would buzz. Awaking early was something he was so very used to and his body had been adapting and evolving and lately he woke up some minutes before his phone wreaking havoc.

When he realised the time he quickly reached for the phone and turned the alarm off in the last minute. The bed was warm and next to him laid Derek; big, warm and snugly. Stiles didn't feel like moving, to say the least.

He turned to the big lump of Derek and pressed his lips to the other man's shoulder. His skin was warm and he looked so peaceful. Stiles only lingered under the covers for a few extra minutes before untangling himself from the bed. He carefully removed Derek's arm from his chest and tip toed around the apartment to fetch everything he needed.

But before hurrying he stopped for a second and just looked at the sight in front of him. In his small and boring apartment there was a bed. And in the bed, there was a beautiful man with dark and feather-like hair. At the moment said hair was standing in every direction and Stiles felt his heart making small, happy jumps when seeing the sight. Stiles wanted to go to Derek and tenderly kiss him goodbye, tell him how much he meant to Stiles and how happy he was that he was in his life. Stiles wanted to tell Derek about everything that had ever happened in his life, he wanted to tell him why batman was better than superman and he wanted to dream about their future together. They hadn't been together for long and Stiles knew that it was stupid to dream about a future with Derek but he couldn't help but do it. Because whenever they were together, he felt happier than he'd ever felt and it just felt _right_. It'd never felt so right in his whole life. After a few seconds of just lingering and watching Derek sleep peacefully, Stiles had to tear himself from his spot.

Breakfast didn't sound appealing at the moment but he knew that once he arrived to the hospital he'd be hungry so he threw some biscuits in his backpack, hoping that there were fresh sandwiches in the staff room.

The whole procedure of putting on clothes, making himself look presentable, brushing his teeth and then searching the apartment for a pen and paper to write Derek a small note took no more than fifteen minutes. After that he hurried into the early morning. The city was alive but it was semi-dark and the usual noises hadn't quite awoken yet. He wondered if they would stay in the city when they grew older. If they would still be together, that was.

Stiles drove to the hospital (in a very safe manner, thank you very much) with a big smile on his face.

*****

The fright of waking up in somewhere that wasn't home was scary. Derek sat up straight as he woke up. He looked around, slightly blinded by the light that escaped the window and his heart was throbbing in his chest. Of course he just jumped back into his sixteen year old self that had woken up many nights finding himself in a new home. But it had always turned out to be that horrible orphanage that fed him old corn flakes. As his heart kept pounding, he slowly realised that the apartment was Stiles' and then he realised that he was alone. It felt empty and quiet. The walls that Stiles had described as empty and embarrassingly boring, only seemed to be that way when their owner wasn't home. Tired, Derek let himself sink right back into the warm bed. The problem wasn't his head, because that part of his body seemed to be over the whole near-dying- thing but his thoughts that kept intervening everything. Well, his leg seemed to steal quite a lot of energy as well.

Fifteen minutes later, Derek moved from the bed and headed into the bathroom. He was hungry, but it could wait. It felt strange to be alone in Stiles' apartment and he felt as if somebody was watching him when undressing and jumping into the shower. Vulnerability didn't strike him very often, but at that moment he felt small and weak.

He showered quickly, dried quickly and hurried home. He felt hungry but knew it could wait for half an hour before he'd go insane from not eating. A small note telling him to _'smile more, sourwolf'_ followed him home.

Well, smiling more would be hard since he was about to call Deaton. A small drop of anxiety fell over him and at one p.m. sharp he picked up his phone. Just when he was about to give up on Deaton ever picking up, something clicked and he heard doctor Deaton's ever so calm voice.

*****

"Stiles! Your boyfriend called!" Jennifer called out.

"He's not my.." Stiles started to say out of reflex but stopped himself and smiled.

"What did he say?"

Jennifer threw him a weird look but then smiled back.

"Apparently he asked Deaton if he could start training again."

"Huh." Stiles combed his fingers through his already messy hair.

"Is he like a super muscled training-guru?"

Stiles shook his head, still wondering why Derek hadn't just asked him about the training-thing.

"Stuntman," he replied half-heartedly. Derek was probably just embarrassed or something. Yeah, that was it.

"What!?" Jennifer called out and looked surprised. "But he... He fell! From the sky!"

"I know. I was there, remember?"

Jennifer looked at him for a second and Stiles didn't know what to do with himself.

"To answer your question, yes, he is indeed a stuntman. Cool, huh?"

 A way too big smile covered his face as he quickly walked out of the room. Jennifer was weird sometimes.

*****

Two weeks later Derek felt content with everything for the first time in a really long time. Not just with how he was living his life; just…. Everything seemed to be right. He was no longer considered sick and even if he wouldn't be able to run for another week or two his leg was functioning fine. The restless energy that had haunted him a few weeks ago had been removed by the same time as Deaton had told him that he had permission to start working out again. And his relationship… Well, that whole part made him smile like a senseless idiot and feel all weird and fuzzy inside. Yes, _fuzzy_.

It had been a long time ago since Derek could just laugh out loud at jokes and really, truly smile. Even his agent had told him he looked different and that the break had made him good. Derek didn't interrupt, just let her speak and congratulate him for being "up and alive" again. When she handed him a few e-mails from different movieshoots his life had become even more exciting again. As the power and strength was rebuilding itself in his body he couldn't stop staring at those e-mails. His job was a part of him that couldn't be ignored and he loved every second of the filming. Getting into the outfit, getting all sorts of make up on him, more often than not to make him look dirty and bloody… Sometimes he got choreography and sometimes he had free hands and got to be creative with fighting, falls and even joy rides with cars that screamed when he pushed the break.

So, when life was good he decided that he had to tell Stiles. Derek had never been as happy as he was at the moment and he kept thinking about how him and Stiles would grow old together and then die in each other's arms. If they were to build a life together, Derek would have to talk. _Shit_.


	10. I'll Need You to Stay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here goes... something.

_Don't wanna call you in the night-time_ __  
Don't wanna give you all my pieces  
Don't wanna hand you all my trouble  
Don't wanna give you all my demons  
You'll have to  _me struggle_  
_From several rooms away_  
_But tonight I'll need you to stay._  
**-Twenty One Pilots, The Run and Go**

*******

 

"I've got a scene to film tomorrow," Derek said a Saturday morning.

Stiles was sitting in front of him at the big table that was placed next to a big window in Derek's apartment. His hair was a big mess and he had bags under his eyes, speaking of a long week and lack of sleep. Stiles had crashed at Derek's place numerous times said week due to long work days when the hospital was short of staff due to some virus. Derek had no problems whatsoever with Stiles more or less living in his apartment, no, he thought it was nice. He liked having Stiles around even if his presence sometimes made it hard to think. Well, lately his mind had been hard to cope with and it wasn't solely Stiles' fault, Derek believed. No, he'd had some sort of heavy headaches that made his mind all sorts of dull and his body feel weird again.

That was the reason for Derek's putting the whole revelation-thing up until the last second. He'd known about the filming for a week now and he'd even been to the set for a whole day, talking to the actors, the team and the choreographers. Derek had been working with both the director and the choreographers before and he knew that they liked him. Sadly, he couldn't take any big fight scenes yet but the stunts in this movie solely consisted of him chasing some cars, getting chased by some cars and then nearly crashing and dying a few times.

Stiles paused. His hand that held onto a spoon full of sugary cereal stopped a few inches from his mouth.

"Okay," he said with a gravelly voice after having looked at Derek for a while.

Derek nodded and felt some relief wash over him. He didn't know why he'd been so anxious to tell Stiles. Or yes, he did. The only bad part about being a stuntman included the whole you-might-die-at-any-second part and considering that Derek had been nearly dead two and a half months ago still made his head ache.

"So you don't think I'm acting like a stupid caveman?"

Stiles unpaused and continued to chew his sugary cereal that he'd brought to the apartment all by himself. Finding Stiles' things all around the apartment always made Derek warm inside.

"It's your work. I mean, of course it's a very stupid job that contains you risking you goddamn life every second, but if it's what you make a living doing, then fine. I won't interfere."

Derek felt a smile spreading across his face.

"Don't smile so widely, big boy. I still think you're a stupid caveman. That's kind of your charm, actually. You rock this whole I-might-eat-you-at-any-given-second ."

"Thank you," Derek said, choosing to ignore that last piece of information, and took a bite of the sandwich in front of him.

"For calling you a stupid caveman?" Stiles said and smiled teasingly, not making it easy for Derek. And he had to give it to him; it was morning and Stiles hadn't slept properly for over a week, even if he always stated that it'd been worse in high school and that he'd sometimes gone numerous days and nights without sleep. Yeah, Derek could easily believe that but it was a bad excuse for Stiles not taking care of himself at the moment.

"For being you," Derek said and took a bite of the sandwich and felt the now very usual urge to tell Stiles everything. He'd thought about it the whole week but had delayed it because of Stiles' already horrible week. He didn't need to find out about Derek's morbid past.

"Oh, so the stupid caveman can express feelings?" Stiles said and crushed the flakes of sugar very loudly.

"You'd rather have me show you?" Derek raised his brows and dropped the thoughts of Kate. He could tell Stiles another time.

"Sure thing, comatose."

"Okay, Stilinski," Derek said and leaned over the table to kiss the breath out of Stiles.

"Dude, you've _got_ to stop calling me that. It's so unsexy," Stiles groaned into Derek's mouth.

"Shut up, Stilinski," Derek hissed back.

*****

Stiles couldn't stop thinking about the call he'd gotten two days ago. It'd been Scott, telling him about a huge surprise birthday party for his dad that his mother and he had been planning. Now they wanted Stiles to come along, to help do something and if he didn't have the time to plan anything; he should just come and enjoy the party.

The thing was, Stiles wished he had the time to just "come around and plan something", but he didn't. He felt embarrassed for nearly forgetting about his dad turning fifty and felt bad for not thinking about planning anything. But most of all, he felt embarrassed about not being the one to plan it; no, instead his dad's not-so-very-secret girlfriend had to plan it with her son that also happened to be Stiles' best friend.

Yeah, Stiles felt like shit but he hadn't told anyone. Derek kept giving him glances asking him if everything was alright but Stiles just avoided them and tried to act normal. The birthday party would be held in three weeks and Stiles really wanted to ask Derek to come but he was afraid. Afraid that he might say no because, hello, dead parents and burnt down house there. Still, Stiles wanted Derek to meet his family and friends. Also, he didn't feel like face the scary thing alone. If Derek would come, that would bring the attention of off the fact that Stiles hadn't been helping to plan anything and that he was a shitty son. Therefore, to bring Derek was an awesome idea. Maybe the guy would even get some sort of calmness about the whole dead-parents-thing. Yeah, that sounded bad. Very bad. Thank god that hadn't been said out loud because that would've been terrible.

Stiles swallowed hard and decided that he needed to ask Derek because he needed to book tickets soon. Ugh, why was life hard?

*****

Derek was sitting in his couch. The screen in front of him was lit up and some bald guy was on there talking, but Derek wasn't listening. His mind was occupied and he felt his brows being held down in a frown. Derek had decided on telling Stiles the same day and he was currently looking at the problem from a thousand different angles. What way was best to tell him? How should he say it?

Derek was drowning in the thoughts and the buzzing feeling of nervousness.

But at eight o'clock sharp there was a knock on Derek's door and he jumped at his seat. His thoughts were suddenly up and with a sigh he stood up, wondering who was at the door. Nobody really ever did show up outside of his door unannounced, so prepared himself for bullshit and opened the door.

There wasn't a big and muscled guy that wanted to hit him outside the door, no, it was only Stiles. He looked… small and nervous. His long fingers were fidgeting with something small and when Derek opened the door Stiles only said a small "hi" and then swiftly made his way into the apartment.

Derek knew something was up and swore to himself. There was no way in hell he was going to tell Stiles about Kate when Stiles was already clearly upset. Stiles could be anxious at times but this whole look was something new. He looked very tired and if he'd looked bad three days ago when they'd ate breakfast, this was even worse.

Derek turned around in the doorway, closed the door and looked at Stiles. Derek didn't know what to do with himself; part of him wanted to go over to Stiles, make him tell everything and hold his hand, stop him from nervously playing around with whatever was in his hand. Another part of him was scared and wanted to run (as always) to avoid collision. He was scared of making it worse, or scared of whatever Stiles had to say.

"Stiles, what is it?"

Stiles stopped walking around and just stayed completely still for a while. It looked strange.

"I…."

One of Stiles' hands combed through his hair, like it always did when he was nervous.

"I just need to ask you a thing."

Derek could see how hard Stiles' heart was beating and he was pretty sure that his own heart now matched the fast beatings. There was a few footsteps between them and Derek closed the space between them.

Stiles swallowed and opened his mouth. Derek prepared himself for a river of words that were likely to come off of Stiles' tongue.

"Okay, okay, okay… So, my dad's fiftieth birthday is coming up and his girlfriend and her son, my best friend Scott.... You know Scott? Uh-huh, well… They're planning this huge surprise party for him in like, I don't know, three weeks, and uhm, I'm kind of going there I guess? I just wondered if you, uh, maybe would want to come with me?"

It was Derek's turn to swallow. Beacon Hills.

"Not that you have to! I mean, I'd totally understand if you don't want to, you know, regarding your family and stuff, but I just… Ugh, I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sorry, this was a bad idea. I'm just…"

Derek realised that he also had been freezing. His mind felt strangely blank when Stiles started moving again.

"Stiles, I-" Don't want to.

"You don't have to," Stiles said. He looked so small.

"Stiles, I'll come with you. It's- I'm fine. See?"

And finally, Stiles stopped and looked at Derek. Years of hiding feelings had made his face into a great mask that hid feelings well.

"You sure?"

"Yes, idiot," Derek said and his heart was beating very fast, very fast. Because he'd just agreed to go to hell. On his own free will.

Derek suddenly felt oddly cold.

"Cool, cool, cool," Stiles whispered under his breath and then clasped his hands around Derek's body and pressed them together.

"Thank you," he whispered with his face buried in Derek's shirt. It made Derek's body less tense but he still felt bad. He felt bad for not being able to follow Stiles with a smile on his face, he felt bad for secretly panicking. But most of all, he felt bad for not telling Stiles the whole truth about why he didn't want to go.

*****

Stiles wasn't stupid. Derek thought that he was good at hiding his feelings but Stiles could clearly feel the way his heart was jolting around. Still, he didn't say anything. Going to Beacon Hills might hurt the guy but it would probably be for the best. Get the guy out of his shell and face his real fears; not just to jump out of a plane. The fact that Derek also wanted to look his fears in the eyes simply because of Stiles made him warm. It was a clever and slightly selfish way of getting Derek to maybe become more in tune with his emotions. And yes, Stiles was aware of just how badly it could turn out because he, if somebody, knew what pain and loss could do to a human being.

"My dad will probably want us in his house," he said as he leant backwards and looked Derek in the eyes. They looked slightly softer and the mix of blue, brown and green shone back at him.

"So, that could possibly be awkward. Probably not though. Hopefully not, at least." He smiled at Derek, tryingly, to see if he'd get a response. There was a small answer that told Stiles he hadn't fucked it up completely. Good to know, good to know.

"You're awesome, you know that, right?"

*****

The next couple of weeks Derek just tried his best to repress the thoughts of the upcoming trip. Yes, he just ignored all the ticket-booking, the phone calls, the packing and Stiles' freak outs about not being able to find the perfect gift. It was a hard process but since Derek was all booked up and caught up in recording speedy scenes with sensitive cars that forced him to only think about where his feet were. Stiles seemed happier than ever and Derek couldn't make himself tell Stiles. He just... he couldn't.

But as the event got closer and closer the bad feeling in his gut continued to grow bigger and bigger along with the buzzing headaches and the day before take of it was eating him alive. His shoulders were tense and he felt like he was about to snap any second.

The thoughts that he knew would force him to sit in that plane and then go into the town that broke his heart kept him on edge. He tried to think reassuringly, that Stiles would be there, that someone could hold his hand but... It wasn't working and as the horribly long day passed Derek grew more and more tense. His shoulders started to hunch and at the end of the day he ended up growling at the shopkeeper in the supermarket when she asked whether or not he wanted a paper bag for the few groceries he'd bought. Because he was going on a trip the next day and he only needed a few thing to keep himself alive.

After that incident, Derek hurried home with a beating heart that stressed over going to Beacon Hills, the place where all his nightmares took place. He'd had a long day and he knew that Stiles wouldn't be off from work for a couple of hours so when Derek opened the door to his apartment he decided that he needed to de-stress. And, what better way to do that than to put on some clothes for running and go for a run. Derek knew that he needed something rougher than just the plain and boring running routes that the city provided for its inhabitants. No, Derek needed those shots of adrenaline that he only could get from basically going berserk in some heavy terrain in the middle of the night with a bad headlamp. It was not in fact midnight yet but it was late enough for the city to start going dark and Derek knew that it would be enough for this time.

He quickly changed his clothing and began walking back out to his car after having locked everything. The city was close to the wilderness and Derek knew exactly where the routes were. With some sort of thick haze over his stressed mind he manoeuvred the car with steady hands that knew the road. His head was heavy with a headache that didn't want to leave and when he passed the bridge that took him out of the city he decided that he would in fact tell Stiles everything. Next thing in the morning.

*****

Stiles was so tired. Like, so very tired. Work was hard work! The lady with the aching hip had been his duty during his earlier shift and taking care of her seemed to take ten times the time that any other patient took. He wanted nothing more than to go home and crash in his bed, preferably with Derek at his side. Stiles smiled to himself, happy even when exhausted. Lately he'd been all happy and gooey, love sappy. Mrs McCall had called him out on it a few times and some of the other nurses had teased him about his romance with the guy that literally fell from the open sky. Stiles liked to remind Derek about his falling and Derek liked to grunt something to an answer even if Stiles knew that he liked their rather special story.

Stiles moved down the stairs to finally sign out. The usual noise seemed distant this night and he tried to hold back the crazy smile on his lips. Was it even allowed to feel this good? He wasn't sure. Stiles was oh, so very tired. It was close to midnight and in a few hours he could go home and enjoy some sleep before driving himself and Derek to the airport.

Soon enough he reached the desk.

"Hey, I'm signing out n..-" His voice died when he saw the receptionist's face. She looked worried and scared; like she'd seen a ghost.

"Are you alright?" He asked her and stepped closer, ready to catch her if she'd faint. She swallowed harshly and kept looking at him. Stiles brain started going through possible sicknesses and went directly into medical-mode.

She opened her mouth, about to say something and Stiles wondered if he'd missed anything. Surely, somebody must've been aware if the receptionist was allergic to something. But no, there were no signs of an allergic reaction other than her lack of breathing.

"You're nurse Stilinski, aren't you?"

Stiles nodded, relieved that the girl talked. She was in her late thirties and even if Stiles did not know her name she always seemed happy so this sudden change of state was rather sudden.

"Oh god," she said and her hands clasped her face.

"I- I'm so sorry," she said and now she clasped his hands instead. Stiles just went with it, let her have her weird moment. He wanted to go home but would stay for a while just to let this woman get checked out because really, she was kind of scaring him a little bit.

"What's wrong? Can you tell me the date?" He looked her in the eyes and her eyes looked so very sad. If he could just get her show him that she was in fact alright, then he could head home.

"It's - it's not me."

Stiles felt confused and gave her a look.

"Stiles, that's what they call you, right?" A little trying but not convincing smile played in the left corner of her mouth and she talked slow, as if she was talking to a child.

Stiles just nodded, thoughts about being home so very soon running through his mind.

"Okay, Stiles, I-"

She swallowed and held his eyes in a sturdy grip.

"I'm going to tell you something now."

For a second, it looked like she would let the silence speak but then she opened her mouth again and in that silence, Stiles heart started to beat.

"Stiles, I've gotten the news that a certain Derek Hale is in here. It's nothing ba-"

"Oh, he's probably just here to see me." Stiles said hollowly. He thought for a short while, Derek hadn't mentioned anything about seeing him in the hospital but a guy could always surprise their boyfriend, right? He was too cute. Even if it was in the middle of the fucking night. He was probably just panicking about the trip, that idiot.

"No, Stiles, I'm afraid not. He's been in an accident and is hurt."

Stiles laughed, he felt strange. This woman was funny and he was tired.

"No, no, no, he's just being stupid. You know, we're going to my home town and he's so _sensitive_ about the whole thing, I mea-"

"Stiles, listen to me. Your boyfriend is hurt."

She locked her eyes with his and he didn't understand what she meant for a couple of seconds. One could think that being a professional would make a person good at handling pain and rough situations but that wasn't Stiles' case.

He continued to stare at her eyes and face, unable to say anything or move for a while.

"A-are you sure?" His voice broke midway through the sentence.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Where?" he asked as his heart started racing.

*********

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry.  
> (I don't know if the final chapter will be up tomorrow because I need to rewrite a few things and I don't have a lot of time tomorrow.)


	11. Stay Alive for Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter. The one that broke my heart. If you are over emotional like me you probably shouldn't read this. Or do - I'm not the boss of you.
> 
> When I got the idea of this story the first time, this was always the plan. When I finally got there, I didn't want it to be like this but it had to. So I'm just going to throw that out there; THIS IS SAD.  
> ALSO I DON'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT MEDICAL SHIT SO YES, PSEUDO SCIENCE.

_I will fear the night again_  
_I hope I'm not my only friend_  


_Stay alive, stay alive for me_  
_You will die, but now your life is free_  
_Take pride in what is sure to die_

**-Twenty One Pilots, Truce**

*****

And just as that, Stiles was back in the halls, rushing through them just as that one time that he didn't dare to think about now because it was all too familiar. That one time, he'd thought that Derek was dead and this time... Well, he didn't know.

This time everything was far too unreal, far too much like a morbid nightmare or an even more morbid joke. Stiles felt sick to his stomach and he just wanted Derek to pop out from behind a door, hug him, kiss him and then scream something about it being April the first. Only it wasn't even close to being April and Stiles knew Derek well enough to know that the guy wouldn't do something that heartbreaking as a joke.

Still, he was hoping for it all to be some sort of joke. And he promised himself, that he would laugh if that was what it all turned out to be. Maybe some tears of joy would sneak out of his eyes, but he would hide them and laugh.

But as he kept rushing through the halls that never seemed to take him to where he needed to be, the whole thing kept getting more and more real. The possibility that it was solely a joke kept growing smaller and the scary truth was lurking behind every door. There was a pit in his stomach that grew bigger for every door he ran by. And of course, when the pit started to eat up his arms, the special white door was in front of him. It looked so ordinary.

*****

_Derek was happy. So very, very, happy. How could he not be happy when waking up next to a beautiful man that claimed himself to be his boyfriend? How could he not be happy when he heard a small whisper from the man next to him, telling him to 'go back to sleep, you loveable dork'? Derek just smiled and placed a light kiss on Stiles neck, making him turn around and open his eyes lazily. 'I thought you wanted to sleep,' Derek said._

_'Why do I even like you?' Stiles smiled and rubbed his eyes as Derek continued pressing kisses to his boyfriend's chest._

_Stiles mumbled something Derek couldn't hear and suddenly there were mouths everywhere._

*****

Opening the door turned everything into reality and brought him back to the day he'd found Derek in the sand, dead to the world. Seeing his dark, soft, featherlike hair rest on the white pillow made his heart beat a whole lot faster. His eyes continued to search for something and he felt his body move forward. At that moment, he didn't realise it because his eyes was stuck on Derek's chest, where two doctors bent over, but he screamed. And when his mouth had opened there were nurses all around him, covering his sight of Derek. In the desperation to se Derek, to touch his hair, his face, his everything and for Derek to open his soft eyes and tell him that it was all a cruel joke, Stiles tried to fight them. But his body was tensed and felt like a stranger's body and there were so many other people there, blocking his way. He felt himself being more or less dragged out of the room and far away he heard someone scream.

*****

_Waking up next to Stiles was something Derek was sure he'd never get used to. To lay with his arms around Stiles' warm body made him happy. If Derek was really close, he could hear a heart beat and it was at those moments that Derek knew that he was so very in love. And if he could, Derek could've laid like that forever. A forever by Stiles' side was something he could live with._

*****

Half an hour later, Stiles sat in a chair. He was still shaking and clasping his hands around a mug that was filled with what used to be hot coffee. Now it was cold and his hands kept shivering even if Stiles felt warm, burning. Next to him sat Mrs McCall and she looked so sad. Stiles knew that he didn't sad to the world but his insides were making all sorts of sad faces. He felt somewhat numb because everything reminded him of his mother's death. When Stiles was twelve, he'd spent every waking moment being at his mum's side in the hospital. And now, ten years later, all the smells felt the same. Once again the heart monitor started to mesmerize him and once again he felt the tears burn in his eyes. Because it all felt too real and too much like death.

Mrs McCall bent one of his hands away from the cup.

"Are you there, Stiles?"

And he was. He didn't want to be there at all, no, he'd given everything to not understand anything again. Stiles yearned for the blissful ignorance he'd felt thirty minutes ago.

"Yes," he murmured and forced his eyes to meet Mrs McCall's. Her eyes told him everything.

"I'm going to bring Deaton here to talk to you. Okay?"

Stiles wanted to shout at her, that he was not something fragile that she had to hand carefully. If she was to tell him what had happened, he would take it. But Stiles didn't scream, he just nodded and she left him to himself.

When she closed a door behind her Stiles looked down at the cup. Then he slowly sat it down next to him and stood up. His limbs were tired and he was still slightly shivering. The panic was gone and replaced by a dark pit that wanted to eat him up alive. The whole situation still felt unreal. Derek couldn't be hurt, Derek couldn't be...-

"Stiles." He turned around, only to see Deaton.

"I'm sorry." Oh yeah? Deaton looked tired and for the first time in forever he actually seemed sorry.

"Oh yeah? What the hell happened, Deaton? And no more riddles, just fucking say what's wrong." Stiles heart had started to race again and he clenched his fists. His eyes were currently staring Deaton down and the doctor looked down.

"I will tell you, Stiles," Deaton said. "Will you please sit down?"

Stiles shook his head. No, he was done being some frail porcelain figurine people threw around.

"When Mr Hale was in the last accident the x-rays missed something. It wouldn't have been bad if it had been treated right away but when the hospital left part of his brain malfunctioning and he acted as if he was fine, the condition got worse."

Stiles was shivering a lot again and he could hear his heart beat in his ears. He clenched his fists again, the palms were sweaty, and opened his mouth.

"Will he die?" And Stiles had thought that he was no longer fragile, no longer about to break but he was. The voice that came out of his mouth was barely audible.

Deaton looked uncertain.

"Are you sure you don't want to-"

" _I don't want to sit down_ , Deaton. Just tell me."

The doctor threw him a worried glance.

"Stiles, he was in a car crash. He will most likely not survive the night."

*****

_The hardest thing with a relationship was when to declare it official. For the whole world to know. Most of all Derek wanted to shout to everyone that he saw that he had a freaking amazing boyfriend that not only liked him but also had saved his life. But, even with Derek's lacking social skills he knew that he would be considered "weird" and "mentally unstable" if he would do such a thing so he kept his mouth shut._

_His friends knew and Stiles friends knew. Wasn't that the most important part? He guessed it was._

*****

The nurses around him told him things, to calm down and relax, to breathe slowly, but he didn't respond, didn't bother to listen to them. No, Stiles was not listening to them, his mind was occupied with other thoughts that made him laugh. Because it felt like he was in some bad hospital drama and that meant that there soon would be directors and camera men shouting about how the shot was perfect, how Stiles was an awesome actor for acting the right way.

Deaton was just behind him. He was probably _sorry_ for telling Stiles what he'd told him but Stiles _didn't care_. His boyfriend was lying in the room that the staff didn't want him to enter and Stiles head was spinning. His only mission was to get into the room before he lost himself or Derek. The beeping from the heart monitor was irregular and then stopped.

The only thing his ears could hear was the calm voices coming through the open door.

"I need one more shot of adrenaline here."

Stiles started knocking on the door, frenetic fists that were at unease. He wanted in, he needed in.

Somebody opened the door and right in front of him, Stiles could see everything. The sight struck him but he didn't stop. He ran to the man in front of him. Stiles' vision was blurred as he clasped the other man's face.

There were no longer any doctors trying to drag him away.

*****

_Derek was tired. He was floating in space and he was very content with it. Somewhere his body hurt, but the pain was dull and Derek had other things on his mind. All around him there were stars and his tired brain kept reminding him of the highlights of his life. Out of nowhere, people started appearing. It was the people that meant the most to him. His dad, his mum and his sister all floated a few feet away from him and even if he was tired he managed to launch himself in their direction. His mum embraced him and whispered in his ear that she was so very proud of him. The dull ache grew more intense as he hugged people, cried and felt happy. Isaac, Erica and Boyd were there, his first crush, those foster parents that did treat him like an actual person. They told him that they forgave him for never really contacting them and he found no words._

_The people disappeared when he'd hugged them and soon there was only one person left and the hole in his body had nearly eaten him up by that time._

_The last person was crying and Derek limped up to him, carrying his fatigued body._

_"_ Derek," _Stiles said and Derek reached out to touch his face. It was wet with tears but still he smiled. It looked pained._

_Derek didn't want to hug Stiles because that would mean that he would disappear, so he didn't._

"Derek," _Stiles said again, "_ I love you."

_"I love you too," Derek managed to say and stroke a finger over the last person's face. He felt cold._

"I'll always love you, never forget that, Derek, don't you dare!"

_Stiles was sobbing and his voice broke midway through the sentence. He caught his breath again and continued. The ache in Derek's body was on its way. It was taking over his body and he wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around the shaking man in front of him, tell him that everything was going to be fine._

"You are my epic love. Yes, yes, I know, but it's so very true, Derek. It's not every day there's a man literally crashing into earth at your feet. Oh, god, it hurts. How can I ever…."

_The ache in his body was no longer dull and he couldn't hold on anymore. Slowly he closed his arms around Stiles body. He seemed so fragile._

"We were going to grow old together! We never even talked about that but I knew that you knew and I knew and…. No, no, no, no, n- o…."

_"I'll always love you," Derek whispered, barely even conscious anymore. "Please be happy. I love you, I love you, I love you."_

_And as Stiles slowly faded away, Derek did too._

_"Thank you for fixing me," Derek whispered into the open space before everything turned black._

*****

TV shows never got mourning people watching people die right. Stiles felt cold, he was shivering, crying and someone swept a blanket around him. It hurt like a bitch. There were no happy endings in reality, only pain.

*********

 

 _And I'm so damn scared,_  
_Of dying without you,_  
_But I've come prepared_  
_Resolved for my life to wear a funeral suit._  
  
_And don't lie, don't lie_  
_Don't lie I know we're fixing to die_

**-Keaton Henson, Corpse Roads**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. Don't hate me.  
> Please comment and tell me what you liked and disliked. It would mean the world to me! :)


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